Let’s Get In Sync: Using The Direct Style More Effectively

When your team gets to work, would you describe them as well-coordinated? Do they follow the same drumbeat, all aligned? Do they cross the finish line simultaneously, like a team of rowers in sync??

Or are they a little less organized, like bumper cars crashing and careening at the county fair?

If you chose the first one, pat yourself on the back. You’re probably well aware that being aligned saves time and energy, and not many teams can boast the same.

Without strong direction, however, teams tend to act more like the second. In these environments, a lack of a clear structure means you’re constantly adjusting or intervening to fix the problem. It can be confusing and frustrating, to say the least!

Direct is an influencing style that helps you avoid duplicated effort, miscommunications, bottlenecks, and conflicts within your team. Mastering this style can improve your team’s performance, but is it one of your leadership strengths?

Let’s see what directing means and find out…

Introducing The Direct Style

It’s essential for teams to have a clear direction. This leads to:

• Coordinated efforts
• Less confusion about roles and tasks
• More efficient work
• Higher motivation
• Increased job satisfaction
• Stronger decision-making, and
• Overall enhanced communication,

This means several things to you as a leader, but most importantly, it means discussing what should be accomplished and setting boundaries.?

At a more detailed level, successfully adopting the Direct style leads to more aligned teams. It empowers people to be creative when suggesting and evaluating solutions, deciding on priorities and taking ownership.

The Direct style involves the following five skills:

1. Clarifying your intentions
2. Defining your framework
3. Discussing expected results
4. Indicating your ambitions, and
5. Indicating your guidelines.

5 Ways To Establish a Clear Direction

Looking at the Direct style as a whole, could you improve in certain areas? Could you leverage this style more effectively??

For most people, the answer is “yes.” I created these exercises to help you strengthen five essential skills involved in directing others.

1. Clarify Your Intentions?

Not everyone on your team will understand your intentions straight away. Don’t worry, that’s normal!

If you’re asked to explain your rationale for choosing a specific goal, approach, or process, clarifying your intentions can help you align everyone.

Practicing the following exercise will help you become better at expanding on your goals:

• Spend a few minutes each day reflecting on your intentions. The main question for you to ask yourself is: What do you hope to achieve with this strategy, ambition, outcome, or course of action? For each intention, write your answer down to make it explicit.
• Next, elaborate on the “bigger why” behind your preference. Ask yourself probing questions to dig deeper: Why is this important to me? What are the benefits of this intention or chosen path? What have I seen, heard, or experienced that makes me want to accomplish this?

2. Define Your Framework

Projects are far more likely to succeed when all parties have clear expectations about factors like available resources, organizational policies, deadlines, and communication channels.?

Once these boundaries or your “framework” has been established, the next step is communicating them to all involved.

Adopting a step-by-step approach to this process is a good way to ensure things go smoothly while understanding how you can improve this skill:

1. Formulate your criteria: These will vary depending on your project but can include details about how your project will be planned, executed, monitored, or evaluated. Consider tangible and intangible criteria from resources and budget to expectations for how teammates will behave.
2. Turn it around: Now adopt a different perspective—think of all the things that might go wrong with your project.?
3. Compare the two lists. What criteria might you add to the first list to ensure the items in the second list don’t occur?
4. Communicate these criteria with your team. Now that you’ve shared your project boundaries, your team members can offer creative solutions that suit your framework!

3. Discuss Your Expected Results

Aligned teams perform better because each person is aware of their responsibilities and has a clear vision of what success should look like.

You can facilitate this by discussing your desired results (a little more on this soon,) but you’ll also need a clear idea of whom needs to know!

Essentially, communicating your desired outcomes is a three-step process:

1. List or map out all the stakeholders involved in accomplishing this goal. What groups or individuals need to be in the loop?
2. Decide how you’ll inform each party, considering the most appropriate or efficient approach for each.?
3. Go ahead and start communicating!

4. Indicate Your Ambitions

There are two big advantages to communicating your goals with others: you help others understand what you want to accomplish, and you create accountability around the process of getting there.

If you’re already clear on your ambitions, you are ready to plan how you want to communicate them. I recommend using the SMART framework to formulate them:

• Specific - Are your goals unambiguous? Have you clarified the who, what, where, when, and why of your intended outcome?
• Measurable - What metrics or milestones will you use to establish your success?
• Attainable - Do you have what you need to achieve your desired outcome? Is it realistically achievable?
• Relevant - Is your ambition worth achieving? How invested are you in its success?
• Time-bound - What is the timeframe for accomplishing your goal; what are the deadlines, and when will you take your first step?

This checklist will help you decide when or even if you want to pursue your goal. If the time is now, you’re ready to indicate your ambitions to your team!

5. Indicate Your Guidelines

Guidelines refer to how things are done and stem from your knowledge or day-to-day experience. They are often less explicitly communicated than policies or formal rules, so communicating them is a great way to support your team.?

When you define the guidelines for a particular topic, it is also easier for co-workers to make autonomous decisions in ambiguous situations.

Here are a few example topics you might want to generate guidelines for:

• How do we determine when we have succeeded?
• How do we communicate with one another?
• What defines good customer service?
• How do we handle our failures?