Don't let "out of sight" mean "out of mind". Strategies for managing a virtual team

It's easy to think of a team as a group of people in a single location - sat on a single desk, or at least in a single office, but today many teams are distributed across multiple locations, with team members working from remote offices, from home, or out in the field at customer sites.


Virtual teams can take a number of forms:

• Field Sales Teams: team members travel around customer sites, occasionally coming into the office for team meetings and company updates
• Global Teams: a VP or CXO may manage Directors or Managers in multiple offices or countries.
• Cross-Functional Teams: a team may be brought together for a project and consist of many functions that don't naturally work or sit with each other.
• Multi-Shift Teams: a manager may support team members that come in at different times or days. 

Don't leave remote workers feeling lost at sea.

This can be really tricky for managers who don't get to see their team members as much as they might like to.  In an office environment managers get the social triggers that enable them to deliver great support.  They might spot:

• A birthday card from a colleague
• A smile because of a job well done
• A thank-you from another member of the team
• A blocked nose and fever

A manager can quickly pick up on these signals and deliver some personal support of their own.  But for team members that work remotely these signals don't exist and through no fault of their own a manager might pass one week, two weeks, a month without a decent conversation with a team member.

How many times have you said, "we really should arrange a 1-2-1.  How long has it been?  As long as that?!"

Whilst it can be more difficult managing a virtual team there are some ways of helping yourself.  Simple suggestions might include:

• A Facebook or LinkedIn group to enable collaboration between your team members
• Chatter or Yammer or any other Enterprise Social Network
• A team blog on Wordpress or Blogger
• A Social Leadership application like Kebuki
• Buddying up remote team members with office based team members.
• Google Hangouts or GoToMeetings to see as well as speak to your team members
• "A day in the life" - work from your team member's home or remote office

This last suggestion is an important one, as often the only time you work closely with a remote team member is when they come in to the office.  By going to work at their home or remote office you can get a real sense of their environment and how their day runs.  This will prove invaluable in times when you aren't together and you need to imagine what they are doing and how they are feeling.

What other ideas do you have for supporting virtual teams?  Have you other examples of virtual teams that we haven't listed?  Do you experience higher turnover in your virtual teams than office based teams?  We'd love you to share your stories with the Kebuki community.

5 ways to make sure you and your team get the most from their holidays

At this time of year many of your team members will be preparing to head off for their Summer breaks.  As a manager we'd encourage you to ask yourself whether you are embracing this opportunity to inspire and lead your teams, or whether you see holidays as a frustrating loss of employees.

Here are our top 5 tips for using holidays to pour more motivation and passion into your team members.

1. Holidays are not optional

Whether your team members get 10 days or 40 days holiday they need to be taken.  The "holidays are for wimps" corporate culture of the 90's is over.  Being at work is not the same as doing great work.  Your team members need time to recuperate and as their manager they look to you for permission to take and enjoy holidays.  Does your persona encourage them, or do they ask you with nervousness, "I wonder if, perhaps, maybe, I could take 3 days?"

At the start of each year make it clear that you want everyone to take their allocation and that you want to get them booked in early to ensure minimal cross-overs.

2. Make a fuss

Take interest in where your team are going.

Once holidays are booked show a genuine interest in your team members' plans.  Where are they going, who with, what are they most looking forward to, what type of food do they plan to eat.  These are exactly the questions you'd ask a close friend going on holiday and show that you're interested, and that you fully support the holiday.

Why not have a holiday calendar up on the wall?  Instead of just getting your team to block out the dates they are away get them to add in pictures relevant to the holiday - some skis or a snow board, a deserted island, or a remote train journey.

Make sure you keep a close eye on the calendar and highlight upcoming holidays in team meetings, "James is off skiing next week so let's hope he has a great time.  Where are you off to James?"  As they prepare to depart engage your Social Leadership and post good wishes to their Facebook or LinkedIn page.

3. $100 holiday clothing incentive

You probably run team incentives over the year for your team, so why not run one for holiday clothes.  Most people tend to rush out and get clothes for themselves or their family whatever type of holiday they are going on.  In the run up to the Summer or Winter holiday period set up some specific team or individual goals that anyone in your team could win (not just a top performer).

• Most support given to another team member
• Best idea for the team
• Best contribution to a team meeting

$100 (or more depending on your budget) always helps and ties a positive connection between work and holiday.

4. Welcome gift on arrival

Imagine a glass of champagne on arrival

Have you ever turned up at a hotel only to be greeted by a free upgrade or a complementary bottle of wine?  Amazing isn't it?  If one of your team members is doing really well, or needs a little boost, why not contact the hotel they are staying at and arrange something for their arrival.  You might know that they are really looking forward to learning to sail so you get them a free lesson, or a meal in the top restaurant - or just a box of chocolates with a note that says "enjoy your holiday - you deserve it!"

The fact that you have listened to what their plans were and that you have taken the time to contact the hotel will mean so much and give them a great start to their holiday.

5. Welcome home

The journey home from a holiday is always less exciting than the journey there!  You cherish memories of a great time and start to think about getting stuck back into work.  It can seem that there is a sharp conflict between the life you want to lead and the life you are leading.  Why not send your team member a postcard to their home address whilst they are away for them to receive when they walk in the door.

It might be something as simple as "I hope you had a great time, you deserved it!" or, why not go all out and give your team member a later start on their first day back.  The four hours you lose will be more than made up in thanks and enthusiasm.

Holidays are what we live for!

The holidays that your team member's take are probably the most important and memorable weeks of their year (just in the way yours are)!  As a manager you can choose to embrace them and to be subconsciously associated with them, or you can choose to be a holiday's nemesis - holiday-good, work-bad.

What is your attitude to your team member's taking holidays.  What strategies have you employed to ensure you and your team get the most out of them?  We'd love to hear your ideas!

Your team's best work is free

As an employee your team members will have a job description and a contract and perhaps a set of goals that you have set for them.  Perhaps you would be happy if the majority of your team came into work, did their job description and hit most of their goals.

But if you are, you miss out on some of the best work that your team can achieve - and the best bit about it is it doesn't cost you anything (not money anyway)!

Consider the three team members in the chart below.  One is un-motivated, one is doing the job required of them, and one is highly motivated.

Your un-motivated team member is delivering 30% of what is required of him or her.  As a manager you need to quickly support this employee and decide whether you can save them, or they aren't a good fit and should leave the team.

Your second team member is doing exactly what is required of them, hitting their number, saving clients, delivering projects, writing code.  They've signed a contract and they are delivering upon it.

But look at team member number three!  They are highly motivated and bringing their entire personality into work.  They are thinking about how they can solve problems not just for themselves but the entire team.  This is the team member who says things like:

• "I've put together a suggestions board for us all to use"
• "I've organised a welcome meal for our new starters"
• "I've arranged a game with our colleagues in Finance so we get to know them better."

The extra work that this team member is doing is not in a job description or contract.  They are using their brain and internal motivation to look at a wider situation and deliver amazing solutions.  Enabling and empowering your team members to do this work is infectious and should be encouraged.

As the team's manager it is your goal to try and get all of your team members into this highly motivated state.  The innovation and productivity of your team will accelerate if you can.

What examples do you have of team members going above and beyond?  How have you encouraged team members to be innovative and supportive of the whole team?  We'd love to hear your stories.

How fast is your team's production line moving?

When you think of great productivity improvements of the 20th century you are probably drawn to the idea of a production or assembly line.  Made famous when it was introduced by Ford Motor Company in 1913 it revolutionised manufacturing by enabling one man to perform the same task over and over again becoming more efficient.

In a modern production line the thing that stands out is that the rate of work is determined by the pace of the production line.  Whether producing cars, televisions or packaging food, the work continues to arrive at employee's stations and the work needs to be completed so as to not bring the entire production line to a halt.  The quality of work is still in the domain of the employee, but the quantity is fixed by the pace of the line.

Now consider a knowledge worker environment - a sales or marketing team, or an accounts or legal team.   There is no production line.  Whilst there is some inbound work, the quantity of activity is very much dependent on the motivation of the employees themselves.

Contrast these two examples:

A motivated employee can be thinking about their day on the way into work, and start 30 minutes early.  They can be making outbound phone calls, or considering new ways of solving a problem for the team.  They might take lunch with a member of another team to learn how they can work better with them, and then spend the afternoon making sure that a new member of the team is happy and understands how a process works.

A demotivated employee might turn up at the exact time, and go straight over to the coffee machine and strike up a detailed conversation about a TV programme the night before.  After an hour of 'planning their day' and having some breakfast at their desk they start to respond to a few emails.  Lunch seems to stretch from 12 until 2, whilst they are at their desk 'keeping up to date with news' on the internet.  The afternoon is soon filled with talk of 'what's on this evening' or plans for the weekend before heading off early to 'beat the traffic'.

Consider the amount of great work your team achieves in a day to be the pace of your own production line and you'll see that employee number 2 is seriously slowing you down.

As a manager you are responsible for the pace of your team's production line.  You are responsible for the team's motivation and passion to deliver great work every day.  No-one can create more time, but you can inspire your team to do more in the time you have.

Have you taken a critical look at your production line?  How fast do you think it runs?  What are you doing to improve the pace of your production line?  We'd love to hear your stories shared with the Kebuki community.

Why Facebook's $100bn IPO gets us excited about Kebuki's vision

This week saw Facebook go public with shares being traded at a company valuation of over $100 billion.  It got us really excited about the vision that we have for Kebuki and so we'd like to share it with you.

One of the things that we've loved about Facebook is their passion for being a company that works on social problems not technology ones.  They deliver their solution using technology, but really they are fulfilling Mark Zuckerberg's vision of a more open and connected world.

Over the last eight years our personal relationships with friends, family and old school acquaintances has been enhanced by this new social layer, helping us to keep in touch with people we would have lost touch with in the real world.  Social Networking cannot be put back in the box.  The human appetite to connect and share has been unleashed and it is now a question of what we do with it.

In the business world companies like Salesforce and Yammer are working hard to drive similar social layers across the enterprise.  They are attempting to put an end to the question "why is it that we know more about the kid we went to high school with than the guy sitting on the next desk?"

Where are the Social Leaders?

As a manager of a team today you are quite able to connect with your team on social networks, and if your company uses a solution like Chatter or Yammer you can set up groups for your teams.  So at Kebuki we're asking why is it that so few managers are Social Leaders, embracing social networking to inspire and lead their teams in the same way as they do in their home lives?

We believe it is because social networks are just the channel, they aren't the content.  You can connect up with all your team members but if you don't have anything to say you are no further forward.

Added to this, a manager's life is so busy that it is virtually impossible to keep up with all the milestones and key events for their team members, so most pass by un-noticed, or focus is just placed on high achieving A players.

For managers to really embrace social leadership they need help with these questions:

• Who should I be communicating with?
• When should I be communicating with them?
• Why should I be communicating with them?
• How should I be communicating with them?

Our vision of Kebuki is a suggestion layer that sits over and above the communication layer between a manager and their team members.  An application that constantly reminds managers what is coming up for their team members, and gives them access to multiple channels to communicate that message.

Kebuki managers will have access to a huge amount of information that helps them to craft inspiring and morale boosting communications to their team.  These could be delivered via a social network, but they could just as easily and effectively be delivered in a team meeting or traditional off-line channel.

Our vision is of Kebuki managers delivering consistent support and inspiration to every member of their team whether they are A, B or C players and whether they work in the office or the other side of the globe.   We see a world where team members gravitate towards Kebuki managers because the culture and morale of their teams is so amazing compared to what they've had to put up with in the past.

This week's Facebook IPO, following on from LinkedIn's IPO last year gives us the confidence that the world wants to become more social and more connected, and supports our belief that managers that embrace social leadership will be more successful than those that don't.  We're really excited to be working on this and helping managers to run amazing teams.

Bin the org chart: Visualise your team in a way that helps you lead them.

If you were asked to draw your team how would you do it?  More than likely you'd replicate the org chart that we're all familiar with - you at the top with all your team members listed below you, split into specific areas of specialism.  The diagram tells you who's in your team and what they do - but it doesn't help you lead them better.

Here we'd like to suggest a new way of visualising your team that can give you some actionable insight into the relationships between yourself and your team members, and between the team members themselves.

The diagram we're going to use contains a number of different ways of defining your team members, and you can choose to customise it to suit your needs.  In our case we've assumed that some of the team work in the office, some work out in the field, and one works from home.  You could choose to split your team by anything that makes sense to you - perhaps the projects they are working on, the desk they sit at, or the office they work in.

Secondly we've then split the eight people in our team into A, B and C players.  Our A players are smashing their objectives every month, our B's are just under-performing, and our C's are struggling.

What we've then done is drawn a connection between the manager and each team member that represents the strength of that relationship.  This manager is spending a large amount of time with his two A players, both in the office and socially.  

The B players are either Field Based or Home Based and so this manager is spending a lot less time with them, and as a result of them being B players he's tending to focus less on them as well.

And finally the C Players - two of them in the office and one field based.  This manager is spending very little time with them and so we've positioned them further away from the manager with thin dotted lines.

As a manager you can now see where you should be spending more of your time - building up stronger connections with your B players, and deciding whether your C players can be brought in closer, or removed from the team.

The next stage is to add in the connections between each of your team members.  This will be highly subjective, but as the team's manager you should have a pretty good idea of who spends time with who.

You might start to see that your A players have quite a few connections to other members of your team, and perhaps that your C players, or those working from Home or the Field do not.  

You might be able to pick out trends that concern you - perhaps a C player who has a low connection with yourself and few connections with other members or your team, or just connections with other C players.  

This should alert you to the possibility of a team member that might leave the team, as well as giving you suggestions for how to resolve problems.

Take a look at our Field Based C Player.  We can see that he has a link into one of our office based A players - so we could perhaps get them to work together on a project, but perhaps better still would be to get your C Player to work on a project with the A player they are not connected to.  You will help foster an additional connection within your team that could help improve the engagement and productivity of your C Player and transform them into a B Player and an A Player of the future.

How do you visualise your team?  Have you used team diagrams to help drive your own activity and decisions?

We'd love to know how you get on with this technique by sharing your thoughts with the Kebuki community.

Tidy your room! A lesson in engagement from your childhood.

Here at Kebuki we're constantly talking about how social leadership can help managers to build more engaged and productive teams.  So what you might say!  My team is pretty productive - they come in, do the work, and we get on with our lives.  What difference does it make if they are engaged or not?

Think back to your childhood and remember these two scenarios.

1. Tidy your room

Your room is in an absolute mess.  Your mother or father has been consistently telling you over a period of a week that you need to tidy it up.  It's built up to a crisis point!  "Tidy your room now!" you get told "otherwise there are no treats tomorrow".

Up the stairs you go, into your room, and mope around - picking up the odd toy or piece of clothing and lobbing it into a corner.  You use your foot to sweep a load of toys under the bed and pick up a heap of clothes and put them in the laundry bin rather than fold them into your cupboards.

Your parents come in and inspect the room and reluctantly approve its cleanliness!

2. The room rearrangement

Sat in your room one day you decide that it's a bit boring the way it's laid out.   Wouldn't it be cool if the bed was moved near the window, and the desk went over by the door?  "Right, let's do it!" you say and immediately set to work heaving your bed, cupboard and drawers around.

As you start to put parts of your room back together it highlights the 'oldness' of other areas and so you start changing posters around, reorganise all the books in your bookcase and decide to present all your model cars on a shelf.

You run downstairs, "can I borrow the vacuum quickly?" and carry it upstairs past your mother who has fainted on the kitchen floor.

That night as you lie in your 'new room' you feel immense pride in your day's work.

Engagement super-sizes productivity

In the first scenario the 'work' is technically achieved and the room is cleaned, but in the second the objective is blown out the water giving everyone concerned real pride in the result.

As a manager it is easy to look across at your team and let yourself off the hook by saying that they are getting the work done - but can you look yourself in the mirror and say your team are as engaged as our room re-arranger?

So how do you foster this engagement and passion in your team?  The main difference between the two scenarios is that in the second one you want to do the work, you have come up with the idea and you have the vision for the solution.

As a manager this is where really good delegation comes in - providing your team with the responsibility and trust to solve problems on their own as opposed to dictating a course of action.

When you look at your team do you see scenario 1 or 2?  What suggestions have you got for developing an engaged team?   We'd love you to share your ideas with the Kebuki community.

The Kebuki Buddy Up Bell Curve

As a manager you probably want to spend as much time as possible with your team members - coaching and supporting them to be the best they can be.  But time is a limited resource and you have to make tough decisions on who to spend time with - your target hitting A players, your average B players, or your below par C players.

Your natural inclination might be to spend most of your time with your A players - after all these guys and girls are the ones that are doing most of your team's work.

Conversely, you might be spending a disproportionate amount of time with your C players.  Perhaps you have a couple of hires that have gone bad that you really want to make stick, or a long term employee who you just can't bring yourself to deal with.

But we like the balance in this Sales Benchmark Index post where it is suggested that managers spend their time accordingly:

• 20% with your A players
• 70% with your B players
• 10% with your C players

The thinking here is that as a manager your biggest opportunity for overall team improvement comes from those that are just under-performing today.  With a bit of extra motivation and coaching they could become your A players of the future whereas the additional support you give to your A players is affected by the law of diminishing returns.

The first thing you need to do to start managing where you spend your time is monitoring what is happening today and to help you do this we've put together a simple spreadsheet template and graphs for you to use.

Change the names to the people in your team, ideally ordered by performance - whether that is sales numbers, lead numbers, customer satisfaction, or any metric by which you are ranking your team.   Then add in the relavent groupings - A, B or C as you see fit.

Over the next few weeks add in the number of hours you spend buddied up with that person - either in a 121, a coaching session, or travelling to external meetings.  Think of it like a food diary where you record what you eat!

You should be spending most time in the centre of the chart

Now you'll see the stark reality of where you spend your time!  Ideally you are looking for a bell curve where most of your time is being spent in the middle of the bar chart.  However you might find that you see a large amount of your time being spent at one extreme or the other which gives you an idea of how you should change.

Check your percentages against your 20:70:10 target

Visit the Kebuki Template to get started and we'd love to hear what initial results you discover!

Don't run another meeting without this agenda template!

Now you are a manager it might feel that your life consists of running from meeting to meeting - "Can't stop - I'm in back to back meetings today!"  Perhaps it feels good to be busy, but if you list out the last 20 meetings you've attended can you confidently say what each of them achieved - for you, for your team, or for your company?

Some of our biggest bugbears with meetings are:

• Recurring meetings that take place because they are in the diary - but no-one is quite sure whether they are still needed.
• Meetings that over run.
• Meetings that start late because the meeting before has over run.
• Meetings that get taken over by the loudest speakers.
• Meetings that have no clear objective.
• Meetings that go completely off topic.
• Meetings that have too many people in.
• Meetings that aren't followed up.

As a manager you might wince reading the list as you think of meetings that you have to attend, or even the meetings that you have organised for your team!

But there is an easy way of taking control of your crazy meetings - a structured meeting agenda.

A good agenda is your roadmap to meeting efficiency and here are the sections you need to include:

A good agenda is the key to meeting efficiency.Try out this template in your next team meeting! kebuki.com/2012/05/dont-r…
— Kebuki (@Kebuki) January 19, 2013

Subject

An agenda leads to meeting efficiency!

What is the subject?  "General Update" does not count as a subject!  You need to come up with something constructive that requires the attendees listed in the room.

Date, Time and Location

When and where is this meeting going to take place?  You need a start and end time and really consider whether a meeting needs to be more than 30 minutes long.  If you cannot achieve your goal in 30 minutes then have have another look at it - perhaps you need to split into two meetings with separate groups of attendees.

Location is just as important.  "TBD" is not a location - it sets a tone of 'let's see what happens" for your entire meeting.

Chair

Who is running this meeting and responsible for it's success?  Ownership is required - but this doesn't have to be yourself as the manager of the team.  Meeting management is a great opportunity for delegation and preparing your team for management themselves.  Check out our post Chairing a Meeting - a beginner's guide.

Attendees

Write everyone's name down - not a group such as "Support Team" or "SMB Sales Team".  Realise that you are inviting people and asking for their personal time.  Often an email group will include a number of additional people you might not have intended to invite and as soon as attendance becomes optional it sets the tone of your meeting.  In the same way, on receipt of the agenda the individuals need to see their own names and feel that they have been personally invited because their opinion is required.

Topic

Now break down your meeting into bite size chunks.  This is where it gets challenging and makes you start to think about the specifics of what you need to meet for.  Each topic should be something that requires the input of the majority of the attendees - if it doesn't then consider splitting topics out into separate shorter meetings.

Decision or Result Required

This is the key to a successful meeting agenda.  Every topic should require a decision or result at the end of it.  If not, then what are we meeting for?  If it is just a general update then we could have delivered that via email.  A meeting topic should have an end in mind, require the input of the team into the discussion and then a decision that either closes the topic off or requires further actions.

Owner

One attendee in the meeting should be an owner for each topic.  That might be the same person for all topics, but more likely you will be delegating to members of your team to take ownership of a particular topic.

Time

Each topic should have a defined amount of time allocated to it.  5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is it should be listed and the chair of the meeting must stick to the agenda with a small amount of flexibility. Attendees need to understand that if 10 minutes has been allotted then they need to get to the decision or result within 10 minutes.  As Chair you should have the confidence to move onto the next topic even if a decision has not been made - do not persevere on a single topic at the expense of the entire meeting.

We've put together a template for you to use for your future meetings which you can download here.  Once you have completed your agenda be sure to send it to all of your attendees in good time so that they can understand the decisions that will require to be made in the meeting and prepare their input.

This template can also make a great starting point for the minutes that are circulated after the meeting.  For more ideas check out our post How to write meeting minutes that work.

We hope this post has been useful for you and helps you to run awesome team meetings in future!

How do you manage your meetings?  What additional items would you add to an agenda template?

5 reasons you should connect with your team on Facebook

Social Leadership is at the heart of Kebuki.  We believe that outside of family and friends the relationship between a manager and a team member is one of the most important anyone has.  In fact, you probably spend more time on that relationship than you do with many others!

And yet, very few managers connect up with their team members on social networks.

We're great believers in connecting up with your team on Facebook and here are our top 5 reasons.

1. Learn more about your team members

Your team members have lives!  They have families and friends, and shocking as it may be - they probably rank these relationships much higher than their relationship with their job and their manager!  Don't worry - you are probably the same!  Connecting on Facebook helps you to learn more about what motivates your team members and what their inspiration is.  Do they love the outdoors?  Do they enjoy motor-racing?  Do they come from a large family?

By understanding more about what makes up your team members' lives you can provide relavent and timely support to them that will differentiate you from other managers.

2. Let your team members learn more about you

The great thing about Facebook is that is goes both ways!  Once connected your team members get to see what you are up to.  You have a family, you enjoy going out with your friends, you fell of your bike at the weekend.  Oh my goodness - you are human after all!

Share your life with your team, let them know what your own dreams and passions are.  Break down the corporate hierarchy and build more personal relationships with your team members.

3. Uncover common interests

Do you love the same tunes?

Facebook is a great way of finding out common interests - whether that might be following a particular Facebook page (maybe you both like Virgin Atlantic?!) or you're both into the same kind of music on Spotify.  You can uncover a wealth of information that can kick off a 1-2-1 and build a much longer lasting relationship with a team member.

4. Share team events

Facebook gives you the ability to show how proud you are of your team in public.  Having a lunch and learn session, or a Friday night drink after work with the team?  Take a photo, and post it to your feed. "Having a great time with the team after a hard week!  Great work everyone!"

By being connected to your team members (or perhaps tagging them) then they'll see the photo in their feed and are likely to "Like" it, share it or comment on it.  This then pushes the content into their own feed, generating interest and comments from their own networks of friends.  "Wow, your team looks pretty cool at work!"

This all helps to differentiate your team, and your company from Any Old Job Inc.

5. Give support around personal events

Finally, one of the top things employees want is support around personal situations.  Perhaps an ill parent, or a sibling who is about to have their first child.  This is information that your team members are not likely to come to you for consideration, even though they would really want to.

By being connected on Facebook you can have spacial awareness of what is going on in your team members lives and give them support even if they haven't asked for it.

Summary

It's essential to remember Facebook etiquette applies to your team members just as it would for your families and friends.  You wouldn't share confidential information about your friends, and you wouldn't use any inappropriate postings against them - so don't do it for your team.  The success of your Facebook strategy relies on only using it for good.

You may come up against some resistance from your team who don't want to connect.  No worries - don't pressure anyone.  It's for you to prove the value to them by delivering great social leadership to those that you are connected to.

Are you connected with your team on Facebook?  Have you run any specific team activities solely on Facebook?  We'd love to hear your stories.

Man on the Moon: Great leaders choose the destination but let the team plan the route.

If you are a first time manager then it can be really difficult trying to work out what your 'job' is!  If you were a great marketeer and got promoted then maybe you should be helping your new team to do great marketing.  If you were a top Sales guy then maybe you should be stepping in to help close their deals.

The reality is that doing so is not great leadership.  You aren't helping them, you aren't helping yourself, and you aren't helping your company.

Your new role removes you from the day to day processes of doing the job, and asks you to envision the future for your team.

• What does your team look like in 2 years time?
• What objectives will have been met?
• Will you be using a new methodology or system?
• How will you rank compared to other teams in the Company?
• What will the culture and morale of the team be like?
• What will your customers and competitors think of your team?
• What will your team members' families think of your team?
• What will your team members think of your team?

As the team's leader you need to crystalise this vision and be able to consistently deliver this vision of the destination to your team.

JFK set a clear visionary goal.

A great example of this is John F Kennedy's speech to Congress in 1961.  Broadcast live he created a goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

He created a clear vision, and anyone watching could understand exactly what the goal was, and by when it needed to be achieved.  That made is really easy for everyone to support the goal and drive it forward whether they were directly or indirectly involved.

John F Kennedy was a great leader not because he helped the engineers design Apollo, or because he micro-managed the project.  He was a great leader because he spent time working on a vision, and crystalised that vision into a goal that every American could buy in to.

Action Points

We recommend taking a morning out of the office, and go somewhere you won't be disturbed.  Get a piece of paper and write down a year 2 or 3 years out at the top of it.

Take a look back at the questions asked earlier in this post and start to imagine what your team might look like.  (Don't panic that you want to have been promoted to a new role in that time - this isn't about you.  JFK didn't need to be President in 1969 for the Apollo mission to succeed).

As you create your vision ask yourself what is really different from what the team looks like today?  Is it a happier team?  Is it more productive?  Is it more respected?  Is it more efficient?  What is going to be so much better because of the vision you have created?

Once you have completed your vision start to distil it down to a handful of key points - 2 or 3 at most.  Remember JFK's goal.  So simple that any one of the millions watching could have repeated it back the next day.

Test it out with someone outside the business - a family member or friend.  "Can I tell you what my vision is for my team?  It's X"  Then ask them the next day what your vision is.  When you get a handful of people that can repeat it (and understand it!) then you are ready to deliver it to your team.

Your vision should be delivered to your team at every available opportunity.  Taking JFK's goal (unless bizarrely that is your goal as well?!) you should have posters detailing the vision on the walls of your office "We will have a man on the moon and back to Earth by the end of the decade".  You should kick off all team meetings with a reminder of the vision "Just so we all know what we're aiming for...."

As a leader you have now created the destination, and it's for your team to step up and plan the route.

How have you gone about creating a vision for your team?  Have you got a clear idea of how your team will be different in five years time?

CIPD study suggests managers think they are better than they really are!

On Management Today we're reading about a recent study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK that suggests managers think they are a bit better than they really are!

In the study (which is reviewed on Management Today) 80% of managers think their staff are happy with their management skills, whilst only 58% of their team members agree with them!

Another big disparity was in the amount of contact that managers had with their team members.  60% of managers claimed they met every team member individually at least twice a month, whereas only 24% of team members said they met their manager with such frequency!

We've loved reading the post because it is these two issues that Kebuki is designed to solve - a lack of communication and irregular feedback on managerial performance.

We don't believe that managers are bad because they want to be - just because they don't have any tools to help them be a great leader.

Kebuki enables managers to set reminders to support their team members consistently meaning no-one gets left behind.

Kebuki Ratings enable team members to give monthly feedback to managers on how they are doing.

There should be no reason for managers and team members to have such differing views on how managers are performing.

How do you think your team rate you? Do they think you are as good as you think you are?!