Motivating & Developing Others

Here are some suggestions for how you can enhance your skills in the leadership behaviours of Motivating & Developing Others:

• Talk to a trusted colleague, whom you see as having strong interpersonal skills about:
  (1) the extent to which they see you as being empathic and supportive of your colleagues,
  (2) ways in which a lack of care and support could impact on team, departmental or organisation performance. Consider what implications this has for your own behaviour going forward.

• Reflect on the extent to which you are active in supporting your colleagues to develop in their roles and in their careers. Consider having conversations with some of them about these in more detail than you currently do, and see how they react. Find opportunities to delegate or broaden their responsibilities.

• Development is a continual process, so role and career development planning should not be isolated to formal performance appraisal processes
  • Try to build in regular one-to-ones (e.g. 2-3-monthly) with the colleagues that you have responsibility for so that you can identify and discuss their role and career aspirations.
  • Reflect on whether the current opportunities they have within their roles that will prepare them towards fulfilling these. If appropriate, try to identify opportunities that are not currently part of their role, but could broaden their experience and provide opportunities for development. Consider also empowering them to take more responsibilities.

• If certain colleagues are lacking in self-belief, which limits their aspiration, try and raise their aspiration through communicating positive expectations of what they can achieve, and use examples of where they have shown areas of strength.

• Offer regular developmental feedback to colleagues so they are aware of what they need to do and improve in order to fulfil their ambitions.

• Consider devoting time in team meetings to check out how members are feeling, and where they may have problems or challenges. Share ideas and suggestions within the team as to how team members can support them or help them consider new approaches to dealing their challenge. This has the potential not only to support the specific team member, but also to strengthen analysis, learning and trust within the team.

• Don’t forget to use team meetings also to celebrate success, even relatively small examples, and so build team resilience.

• Consider regularly asking each member to provide a minute summary of what they have learned/benefitted from, as a result of the meeting.