How awesome was your team in 2023?
It’s coming fast! That part of the year where get to enjoy all that good summer stuff. Holidays are close, and people are naturally looking for a break.
So while it might be too early to get your people thinking about 2024, there’s a great opportunity to give them some space for reflecting on 2023. There will be some amazing things they have achieved over the course of the year – some of that will be individual, some as a group. I like the idea of reflecting as a group. It’s a great chance to focus on what your team does really well, and how they might turn the dial up on that.
Research completed in many and varied environments shows significant increases in motivation and satisfaction when people focus on the stuff they do well (ie, their strengths). Why? Well, we’ve typically developed any area of strength because we discover enjoyment in doing it to start with, and we repeat and improve on it over time. You almost can’t help but get better when you do that.
So as you hurtle towards the end of the year, what might you do to get your people to take a breath, look back, and reflect on what’s worked really well for this team in 2023? Here’s one way I approach it with leaders I work with:
Leader first: As the leader, generate the conversation: What things do you think have gone well over the year for the team? Where has the team made real impact and achieved significant progress?
Team perspectives: Invite other observations from across the team – make sure everyone contributes to this.
What’s the stuff they are really proud of this year?
What has this team done that no other team does?
What is this team known for across the organisation?
What comes out might be broader than just the functional work they deliver. In fact, that’s kind of the point. If the team is highly effective at, for example, relationship building, that’s probably an underlying key to other successes they have achieved. So try and push them a bit deeper than the surface stuff. For example, if they are happy with projects they aced, what were the attributes they demonstrated and skills they executed that meant those projects went so well?
Spend some decent time on this. There are not many points in the year where we pause and allow ourselves to get that sweet (or slightly smug – that’s fun too) sense of satisfaction about the effort we’ve been putting in and the impact we’ve had.
Making it (really) count: Now it’s time to look forward. 2024 is coming, and it’ll be quick moving. If work programmes aren’t already taking shape, they soon will be and it’ll be all on. It’s easy to be swept straight into the ‘do and deliver’ of the work. So here’s a chance to think about how you want to do and deliver as a team in 2024. Review those strengths that brought you success in 2023. As a team, explore:
How do you want to be deliberate about repeating those in 2024?
How can you deepen those strengths even more?
If you were to apply them to specific areas of your work programme, how would that help you make even more impact as a team?
Who’s best at them in the team?
Who wants to get better at them? How might the team help that to happen?
How do you want this team to be known in 2024? How can playing to strengths help that happen?
Based on everything that came out in this step, invite the team to identify 1 or 2 strengths they want to deepen together as 2024 gets underway. Then ask them to come up with some ways they might do that. My favourite way of doing this is to ask people to pair up, and come back as a team next week (pre-Christmas week morning tea, anyone?) with an article, contact, video or exercise the team can focus together on, related to the strength you are wanting to build on. This could become your team development series for the first part of 2024.
Have a go with your team, and let me know how it all turns out!