Tell ‘Em What You Want and How and Why

The people that you work with have lots of things to accomplish every day. As a leader, strive to ensure that what you do makes it easier for them to do their job. When you need some help from someone tell them exactly what you are looking for. If you have a project that needs to be completed and have some ideas in mind how to do it, tell them, don’t hold back. If you know exactly how you want it done, it doesn’t make sense to turn them loose only to have to redirect them later. If you don’t know how you want it done and are wide open how to get to the goal, tell them that too so they know they have a clean slate. If you have ideas, share them up front. If you know of pitfalls that may happen, give them a heads up. There is no reason to make someone guess. Most people want to do a good job and make the person giving them the assignment happy, so tell them how to make that happen.

Think about the extra information that you would like to have when someone gives you an assignment and provide those details. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes just for a moment and think about how you can make their success more likely. Help them to understand the whys and how this task fits into a larger picture and any related strategies. With the right information, people at every level make better decisions. Give people every chance to succeed.

Helping New People Join the Team - Lunch Buddies

I’m going to write a few entries about how to best assimiliate new people into your group. An often overlooked activity that can have extremely large rewards is having a plan for getting new team members to feel part of the team. A lot of times companies just think that they can drop someone in, give them a tour and a little company background, tell them a couple of tasks to perform, and they are done. They can learn the rest as they go along is the thought. Well it takes more than that to make someone feel a part of the team.

On teams that I lead, one thing that I always have in place before a new person joins are lunch buddies. The lunch buddy offers to go to lunch with the new team member the first day or first couple days. It can be the same person all week or several different lunch buddies for exposure to different team members. This doesn’t mean that the lunch buddies are buying lunch, it means that the new person has someone to have lunch with. This also helps to establish a more friendly relationship with people on the team. Sometimes people bring their lunch with them to work which is ok. The lunch buddy doesn’t have to eat with them, but they do offer to eat lunch and they go over the ins and outs of lunch such as when people typically take lunch, whether they eat in or out, and some local places to get lunch. The lunch buddy doesn’t sit back and wait for the new person to ask questions, they offer information. The lunch buddy takes initiative and sets up contact.

Being the new guy is hard enough, so give them the best chance to succeed and feel like they are part of the team and not an outsider. Current team members aren’t always good at reaching out to new people, not because they don’t want to, but because they are not sure how. The lunch buddy idea helps facilitate interaction and getting people to know each other. Try having a lunch buddy program in your group and let me know how it goes.