3 Strategies to Develop and Empower Your Team Members

What are you doing to grow your team members? 

That is a question that I pose to my clients and audiences often, and the answers I get cause me to realize that many (if not most) managers don’t really know how to develop their people. As much as we may not want to admit it, most managers in the workplace today are exploiting their employees more than developing them. 

In our society today, the word exploit or exploitation has become predominantly associated with sex trafficking, so it would be easy to believe that my assertion is an extreme and unfair statement. In fact, if you’re a manager reading this, you may be tempted to think that you wouldn’t ever do that. But allow me to clarify my intent when I say they are exploiting their people. The literal definition of the word exploit is much less egregious than you may think. 

To exploit is to make full use of and derive benefit from someone or several someones (i.e., a team). 

To some degree, that is a manager’s job–to engage and mobilize their team members to achieve, accomplish, create, carry out, or otherwise meet the requirements of their job and their customers’ expectations. But if that is all a manager is doing, then they aren’t really leading others. If someone is only using or utilizing existing skills, talents, giftedness, knowledge, and capability, they aren’t helping people go somewhere that they’ve never been before and couldn’t get to on their own. 

3 Strategies for Developing Team Members

So, how can you help people grow and develop? Well, there are dozens of steps you can take, but I want to share three key strategies you can employ to help you accomplish that. You may read them and think, “that’s nothing new”, or “I already knew that”, but if I asked your team members, would they tell me you’re really doing these things effectively? If you consistently make these a part of your interaction, then you will become a leader of people, regardless of your positional authority. 

Strategy 1: Identify What’s Working

First, it is important to identify what the other person is already doing well. These may be interpersonal or procedural, but every team member is likely contributing to the good of the organization in some way, or they would no longer be here.

Once you’ve agreed on what that is or what those things are, you should help them consider how they can leverage those abilities to bring greater value to their customers, both internal and external. Could they do it more quickly, more often, or with more people? Could they train others how to do them? Could we take the essential elements of what they are doing well and utilize that framework in other systems and/or processes? Any of those actions will help them become a greater resource. 

Strategy 2: Identify Opportunities to Leverage Strengths

Second, what do they have the capability to do well, but don’t often have the opportunity to do? 

You may have one of your most creative team members in a role that requires them to do the same thing the same way every day with little room for variance. Though they may do that job well, their creativity is wasted. Could you delegate a task or project to them that would allow for innovation and renovation, and make use of their ability and tendency to wonder why you don’t (fill in the blank), then create new systems, processes, best practices, etc.? 

Perhaps you have another team member that is great with people, but they are in a position that isolates them from the rest of the team and external customers. Could you move them (geographically or positionally) into an area that would afford them the chance to interact with more people during the average day? This will lead to a better environment for your team and improved customer experiences, both of which will contribute to a more engaging and productive culture within your organization. 

Strategy 3: Enlist Help Where Needed

Finally, what are the gaps that the team member needs some help closing? It is often easy to dismiss things like this because “they’re not that vital” or because “people are either born with it or they’re not, and you can’t change that.” But with focused effort, attention, coaching, and perseverance, most people can eventually mitigate weaker aspects of their professional and interpersonal toolboxes. 

You may not be the best person to coach them in a certain area. You may have to recruit someone else in your organization or help them find external resources. One thing is sure: doing nothing will continue to produce predictable, negative results, and that shouldn’t be considered acceptable. Resigning yourself to “that’s just who they are” or “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is not the mindset that great leaders possess, and it won’t produce growth. 

While these three strategies may seem elemental and obvious, they are time-tested, and they will help you help your people tap into unrealized potential, produce more, and experience greater fulfillment in life. The result is a renewed sense of self-worth, which will trigger greater self-esteem and give them the confidence to try to reach the next horizon, and the next. Eventually, it will become a positive and self-perpetuating cycle.