When you’re no longer in the day-to-day details of a team’s work, it can be hard to know when it’s time to step in and offer help to the person who is responsible for leading that team.
Low performance on high-level, lagging indicators such as meeting deliverables and customer satisfaction ratings can be clear signs, but they can also take a long time to show up. What other tools do you have?
Two key kinds of conversations can help you.
The first may seem too obvious to be helpful. And that’s a one-to-one conversation with the leader of the team. If they share that they’re struggling, that’s the easy way to know. But what if they don’t? If they’re constantly reporting that “it’s all good,” you can probe just a bit to have them explain how they reached their conclusion. What evidence are they looking at? Are they looking at the right things? Does the evidence paint the same picture for you?
The second conversation is a skip-level conversation. Careful here, though. The primary purpose for talking with the members of the teams led by your direct reports is not to dig up the dirt on the leaders. It’s to build relationships and to learn how you can support the team from your position. But you might notice recurring themes that indicate an opportunity for growth in the leader of one of your teams.
If you’d like to explore further how to tell whether one or more of your leaders is struggling, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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