Key Ingredients for a Manager’s Action Plan
Whether your organization is large or small, managers are the glue that holds everything together. Gallup reports that 70% of team engagement is predicted by the manager. This means that when managers are doing their jobs well, teams and organizations thrive. And when they are performing poorly, both employees and organizations suffer.
In today’s workplace, the demands on a manager continue to increase. We are asking that managers not only make sure that work gets done, but that they also build into the people on their team. We need them to translate organizational priorities into actionable plans, create systems that decrease chaos, and help their employees reach their professional goals. And we expect them to do all of this while dealing with challenges like managing a hybrid workforce, differences between generations, and the rate of change in today’s world.
We are asking a lot of managers, and if we expect them to thrive, we need to give them the tools they need for success. One of the most important tools we can give them is a solid plan.
Traditional action planning asks a few key questions:
What needs to happen?
What are the major milestones or deadlines?
Who will do the work?
How will you know that you succeeded?
These questions are all extremely important. However, they leave out the human element of work. Every person has different talents and motivations, and when we take the time to include the more personal elements of work into our planning, organizations see much better results. Some of these elements include Meaning & Purpose, Awareness & Realization, and Organizational Structure.
Meaning & Purpose
Our “whys” are what motivate us because we all want our work to be significant. As such, a manager needs a plan to uncover their personal motivations and the motivations of their team members and then look for the intersections with the organization’s mission and current goals.
Awareness & Realization
Each person brings a different set of talents to a team. When people have the chance to put those talents to use and develop them into strengths, they are more productive and more satisfied with their work. Managers can enable this by getting to know their people and using this knowledge to assign work that will keep them engaged and foster more collaboration.
Organizational Structure
A good manager removes the obstacles that keep their team from accomplishing their goals. They can decrease frustrations by examining their team’s current systems and processes and working to make them more efficient. This does not, however, mean that a manager is solely responsible for the solution. Managers can look to others on their team with complementary talents or their own personal board of directors for help instituting change.
When managers take the time to understand these elements and incorporate what they learn into their personal action plan, they are able to improve communication, connection, and collaboration. This, in combination with the traditional components of action planning, allows managers to create thriving teams.
Are your managers in need of a solid action plan?
The Brilliant Manager is a group coaching program that focuses on personal awareness, professional development, and action planning for managers of all experience levels.