 As a new manager, giving direction to team members seems pretty easy. I mean, you tell them what you want and they're going to do it, right? Anyone who has spent time as a manager probably wishes it could be that easy. I certainly have many times. Giving direction to employees and then seeing them take action and deliver the results that you want to take skill. It is not easy. With this video, I hope to make giving direction to team members easier and more productive for you. I'm covering these steps. Put these steps into practice when giving direction to teams and you will improve how your team works and the results they deliver, which in turn benefits you. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25-year management career in corporates and household names through to SMEs. I've won best team prizes at national and company level and I've learnt that giving super clear direction to team members is a step you just can't afford to get wrong. If you're new to this channel, enhance.training shares business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. The first step before you start giving direction to team members is to know your team and play to strengths. Some team members will just want to agree a really clear picture of the goals to achieve and then they want to be the ones to work out the routes to get to those goals. They have the capability and the desire to do this and if you try to give them a route you'll be wasting your time and their talents. Other team members would have a small heart attack if you expect this from them. They want and need different levels of support to plan out the route to get to the goals agreed. Giving direction to team members and providing support is not necessarily telling them what to do. Many want the challenge of working out what they can and certainly don't want to be micromanaged. As their manager you'll need to flex the level of support that you give them depending on the person and the project. And you might have team members who need support approaching what most would consider micromanagement. Say if you have an underskilled employee or underperforming employees on your team. So work out exactly what skills and strengths each of your team members have. And then compare this to what you expect the project or activity will demand from them before giving direction to employees. Work out who is best to deliver what. Feel out the level of support each person needs as they work through the project. The second step when giving direction to team members is to be specific when setting direction. Ideally you are setting out where you want the team to get to. This should be a specific goal or at least a clear vision of what success looks like. The more specific you are able to be in describing the goal the clearer it will be when that goal has been reached. Being specific when giving direction will also make it easier to plan how to get to that goal. A specific example might be I want to get the profitability of the products we sell to customer X to over 20% on average within the next six months without shrinking the account. This is a fairly specific goal which is time bound. Compare this to we need to increase profitability and make it new to work out how we will do this. This general goal gives the team members very little direction and we don't know what would be considered a success. Set goals that are specific and don't leave a lot to interpretation. If you set general goals everyone might end up with different ideas about what that goal is. And do note in this discussion around setting direction that we've been talking about setting a goal or a place to get to. I've not been talking about how to get there. For people competent in their role they won't need instructions on how to get there. They can work this out for themselves. They may want support to be able to bounce their ideas around with you and to run their preferred route past you to get your approval. Do not micromanage and give them the space to use their skills. The third step when giving direction to employees is to provide the why or vision when giving direction. Providing the why when you want to reach a goal provides context. This helps those having to work out how they're going to get to that goal. The why also builds in flexibility as though delivering the project or activity understand why you want to get to the goal and can make decisions in the best interests of getting to the goal and preserve the reasoning behind the goal. Providing the why reduces the team members' reliance on you to provide input and increases their ownership and motivation. Explaining the why treats them as valuable, trusted colleagues with skills to bring to bear to solve the problem rather than robots that need to follow direction. Always explain the why and provide the vision surrounding the request or goal that you have set out when giving direction to team members. The fourth step when giving direction to team members is to ask the team to plan the route. There are so many benefits of taking this step. First, you save time solving problems. Secondly, it allows you to leverage your skills across a larger number of team members very important for promotions for instance. Third, it helps team members develop problem solving skills, project management and leadership skills. Fourth, it increases employees' ownership of the solution thus increasing the likelihood of a successful implementation. Fifth, it provides motivation and development for team members. Sixth, it makes the project more enjoyable to do particularly for the more capable team members. And seventh, it increases the chance of success of the project. And eighth, it requires you to coach and mentor rather than project manage. Some managers worry that they will lose control of the project or activity or that they are rendering their role less important. I would argue that you gain more control of the project if you are coaching and mentoring the team members that way. And if you can manage 20 projects rather than 4 projects you are going to be a lot more valuable to the company that you work for. You do have to change the way you exercise control from a direct to a more indirect approach and you do need to follow up more regularly. I'll cover more of this in step 6. Overcome any fears you have of letting go and you'll be better off as a manager for all the reasons outlined. The fifth step when giving direction to employees is to plan for change and uncertainty. Business environments are always changing externally and internally. When giving direction to team members you should factor some change and uncertainty into the project. This might be as simple as giving yourself a few more days to complete a project to cover the unexpected and urgent problems that will come up. Or it might be rigorously scenario testing various parts of the project plan that are out of your control and building in margins of safety in case things go wrong. With larger projects the unexpected will nearly always happen in some way. Being prepared for this and giving yourself space to deal with these challenges when setting your goals and giving direction to teams will enable you and your team to be more successful. Plan for change and uncertainty as best you can. The sixth step when giving direction to team members is to trust the team and verify. If you don't trust your team members then they will figure this out and their motivation, happiness and productivity will plummet. This absolutely does not help you. So what is the best way and quickest way of working out if you can trust team members? Well don't wait until completion day of a project or task. Pop round to see them periodically and get them to show you how they are doing. If yes then great trust is being built and you will not need to pop round as much. If what you see is not telling with what they tell you then you have a chance to help them get back on track and to recalibrate what they are telling you. You may need to pop round to see them more often. And when you do pop round don't go round to check up on them. Go round to help them support them and see if there is anything they need. If your mindset is important you will still get to see exactly what you need if you ask in the right way and they will feel that you are there to help them do a good job not check up on them. This is important. Don't say tell me where you've got to with Project X. Ask what can I do to help you deliver Project X or would you mind quickly showing me where you are and talk me through your biggest challenges so I can work out how best to support you. Trust your team. Build that trust by getting to know each person and their strengths and follow up periodically to see where you can help them best. The seventh step when giving direction to team members is to use praise and positive reinforcement. There are so many ways that you can use praise to encourage the right behaviors from your team members and to get them to help you give better direction to your team members. Praise them for, you know, a good idea that's been provided or a challenge that has pushed the team to think more deeply about the problem or expose the risk that's not been considered. Or praise them for a piece of work that delivered the results quicker or better than expected. Praise them for supporting their colleagues or for showing the right behaviors for team success. There are so many things to praise. When you do praise make sure the action or behavior is worthy of praise i.e. be sincere and honest in your praise. Praise privately. Praise publicly. Use prizes. Get your imagination into gear and think of the different ways that you can celebrate different types of successes. And I'm not suggesting that you only praise nor that you don't have the difficult conversations when you need to. Praise more than you criticize and you are more likely to have a happy team that partners with you making your job a lot easier. So there you have seven steps to improve giving direction to team members. Setting clear direction is a vital management skill from which many others flow. As a quick recap the seven steps are In my experience the better you set direction the more likely the team will reach the goals agreed. This helps you, the team and the company. And no matter where you are in your management career keep working on improving your direction setting skills. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.