Want to be a better leader? Develop People for Optimal Performance!

To develop people for optimal performance, leaders help people to focus.

Effective leaders know what is important, and because they have a broader perspective, they can help others to set appropriate/targeted goals, and they can remove barriers that may prevent others from achieving them.

Try this:

Ask everyone you work with to tell you the biggest obstacle currently preventing them from being as productive as they would like to be. Have people circulate whatever obstacles they see to everyone on your team to make everyone in the group aware of everyone else’s concerns, and give everyone an opportunity to be helpful, if possible.

Once this is done, start to plan specific strategies for working through and removing the barriers to performance that were mentioned. Removing them is the best way to improve outcomes. Less knowledgeable leaders may think that pressing on is the superior approach when problems arise, but it’s not. This is a vitally important distinction to be aware of and to operate from.