Leaders: Tips to Inspire Greatness in Your Team in 2023

It’s that time of year again – the time to turn your calendars, and shift your focus toward a new beginning, a fresh start and a new chapter in your life. The beginning of a new year is a rebirth of sorts, and an opportunity for a mental reset. It is full of potential and endless possibilities. For leaders, it is not just a fresh start for you, but also for your team and your organization. This is the perfect opportunity to harness the energy of the new year, and take advantage of its momentum. Think about how you can lead by example, and what you can do to engage, influence and motivate your teams amidst these continually complex business times. How can you combat the Great Resignation in 2023? It starts with YOU as the leader of your team!

I asked you in my December LinkedIn article ‘The Dawn of a New Leader(ship) Era in 2023,’to consider how to further cultivate resiliency for you, your employees and your organization. To think about ways in which you can empower and strengthen your organization. In this January LinkedIn article, I take it one step further by giving you tips to inspire greatness in your team. I invite you to make a commitment to inspire greatness, empower a growth mindset in your team members, and create a high-performing team in 2023.

How to Inspire a Team That Thrives

You don’t want to just survive in 2023, you want to THRIVE as a leader and an organization! What are the skills you need to make this happen? What can you do to inspire your team? What can you do to increase employee retention, and reduce your turnover rate? How can you connect with your employees to drive innovation? It starts with YOU! In order to inspire your team during these complex, every-changing times, you will need to lead by example, and connect with your employees on a deeper, more profound level. Now is the time to create a human-oriented team and organization. One that is inclusive and focuses on “we” rather than “me.” The inspiration starts from creating an inclusive team where employees feel heard, safe and seen.

According to Luciana Paulise, Culture Coach & Author of the book We Culture?, there are 12 necessary behavioral skills to lead and collaborate in the future of work to build a We Culture in a face-to-face, remote, or hybrid workplace. In her Forbes article, ‘12 Leadership Skills For Growing Teams In 2023,’ Paulise discusses a "we" centric culture rather than a "me" centric culture and lists the 12 behavioral skills needed below. You can read the article in its entirety by clicking here.

1. Define a shared purpose and values: work together to define purpose and values as a team
2. Nourish your network: communicate with your connections beyond your comfort zone. Be intentional about which relationships to maintain and improve.?
3. Normalize change:?Accept failure as part of the innovation process, understand what went wrong and learn from it.?
4. Push decision-making to the front line: Support experimenting and learning where the action takes place at the front line, redirecting attention to improving, not blaming.
5. Support team in understanding and defining their own metrics: Understand and share results, monitor and verify them as a team.?
6. Learn to manage risks by listening: support the team in sensing and communicating risks and threats.?
7. Build empathetic one-on-one relationships:?Increase engagement by customizing your leadership style to the specific needs of each team member through?one-on-one conversations.
8. Promote team psychological safety:?Build an environment where team members can collaborate, ask questions and be disruptive without being dismissed as ignorant.
9. Embrace diversity, equality and inclusion:?Respect and focus on the strengths of your coworkers by building diverse teams where everyone feels they have equal opportunities to succeed.?
10. Promote autonomy:?Foster individual responsibility while you learn to give away control.
11. Encourage team routines:?support your team in developing team routines, such as standardizing how you organize team meetings to collaborate more efficiently.
12. Build self-organizing habits:?Build an environment where employees get things done with minimum direct supervision

What are the Characteristics of a High Performing Team?

Once you have motivated and inspired your teams with your shared vision, it’s then time to develop and sustain a high-performance team. What is the definition of a high performing team? What skills do you think a leader needs to embody to create this type of team? According to Simplilearn, ‘The Secret Recipe to Building High-Performing Teams in 2023,’ “A high-performance team is a group of highly skilled people working in cross-functional areas and who focus on achieving a common business goal. The team is aligned with and committed to shared values and vision and work towards a common objective. This highly effective team is innovative in?problem-solving and is known for displaying a high level of communication and collaboration, delivering consistent and superior results.”

How to Cultivate a High-Performing Team

Navigating the volatile and turbulent business sphere in the past two years has been challenging for leaders and employees alike. These challenges will only continue in 2023 with high inflation continuing to affect the economy. So, what can you as a leader do to cultivate high-performing team during these turbulent times? According to Entrepreneur, ‘7 Steps to Building a High-Performing Team,’ “The need for building high-performing teams has never been as critical in today's dynamic and ever-changing environment. The last two years have been a real challenge for every organization and leader. Navigating a global pandemic, managing constant supply-chain disruptions and increasing talent attrition in the job market created an unprecedented challenge for many leaders.” Listed below are the seven key aspects of building and leading a high-performing team: (you can read the article in its entirety here.)

1. Lead by example and show the way – To build and lead a high-performing team, you must become a high-performing leader. High-performing leaders know their strengths and weaknesses. They are highly self-aware and competent, both emotionally and intellectually. High-performing leaders have the unique ability to communicate a big-picture strategy and vision and simultaneously understand the details entailed in executing it.
2. High-performing teams have clear goals, roles and responsibilities - High-performing teams have clearly defined goals and understand their role in achieving them.
3. Embrace diversity of thought and wide-ranging skill sets – If you want your team to be as innovative as possible, then integrating individuals with diverse backgrounds and skill sets is the way to get there. Diversity matters for many reasons, including that more diverse companies are more financially successful. According to research by Mckinsey, "companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians" and "companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians."
4. High-performing teams follow a clear vision and mission - In a 2016 LinkedIn study 64.7% of job seekers said that not knowing, or disagreeing with, a company's mission, values or purpose is a deal-breaker when considering a future employer. The study also found that 52% of professionals want to work for a company whose mission and vision match their values.
5. Establish efficient infrastructure and automate repetitive work - One of the keys to building a high-performing team is establishing a consistent reporting cadence (weekly or monthly).
6. High-performing leaders empower team members with decision-making authority - To supercharge your team and make them as effective as possible, you want to?empower your team members to make the necessary decisions to achieve their goals.
7. Encourage ongoing personal and professional development - A recent survey?by TalentLMS found that 91% of companies and 81% of employees say up-skilling and re-skilling training boosted work productivity. In comparison, 80% of employees say such training boosted their confidence.

In conclusion, as we begin 2023 with the momentum of a new year, I encourage you to inspire your team to greatness! Lead by example, share your vision, and listen with an open heart and mind. Cultivate a humancentric and human-oriented culture that will thrive in 2023. Embrace the fresh start that you have been given for you and your team.

Erin Owen, MBA, PCC, JCDC/JCTC, CPQC (she/her/hers)

Executive and Leadership Coach

Website:?https://erinowen.com

LinkedIn:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/erinowen/