All companies go through times of stress and high pressure from time to time. Strong leadership is needed to guide your team through these times. How you handle stressful situations is a reflection of your leadership skills. Here are some strategies to guide your team under pressure:
Recognition
Everyone likes acknowledgment, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. During times of intense workloads, and deadlines, it’s easy to forget to take a step back and acknowledge your teams hard work. Leaders recognize hard working employees and the effort they put into their work. Rewarding individual accomplishments shows that you’re paying attention. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then reward them for a job well done.
Problem Solving
Instead of coming up with solutions about the workplace on your own, ask employees their opinions. Identify problems that your team is facing and find solutions for those problems. Communicate and brainstorm with employees to find solutions. Get their feedback on ways you can improve procedures to make their jobs easier. Good leadership values feedback and appreciates communication. There’s no better way to take the pressure off than getting employees involved.
Trust
Leadership means guidance and supervising employees. Leaders that take control by pushing people around will find their employees are quick to leave. Micromanaging your team will cause your team burn out and become resentful. Capable people don’t want to put up with being treated like children. Trusting that employees will do the right thing will go a long way to earn mutual respect and trust.
Delegate
Nothing burns good employees out quite like overworking them. During times of intense workloads and deadlines be sure work is distributed evenly. Ensure you have the proper amount of people for your team so that work is evenly distributed. Understaffed departments need their leader to advocate for them to get more staff. It’s so tempting to work your best people hard that leaders frequently fall into this trap. Overworking employees is perplexing to them; it makes them feel as if they’re being punished for their great performance. Overworking employees is also counterproductive.
Tolerating poor performance
A team is only as good as its worst player. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially if your team is under pressure. Leaders that fail to address these issues harm employee morale and engagement, relationships, corporate culture, projects, and budgets.
Anyone can be a leader, but it’s takes a great leader to manage their team under pressure. How you handle stressful situations is a reflection of your leadership skills. These strategize can help to navigate your team through, and work their best for you.