Transform Routine Tasks Into Team-Building Power: A Blueprint to Energize Your People

John is eager to get 2024 off to a great start.  As a VP in a multinational, he wants to start the year strong and create momentum.

A Missed Opportunity

To nail the strategy for the coming year, John sends a PowerPoint in an email and asks his team to add a slide with their priorities.

That’s how it’s always worked, and there’s nothing wrong with this, per se.

However, even the most standard, routine work offers an opportunity to energize your team.

John wants connection but he’s inadvertently creating bureaucracy.  He wants innovation but has resorted to tired emails, which even he finds uninspiring.

Instead of doing things differently and creating better team dynamics, he's missed a key opportunity to energize his team.

Good Intentions Need The Right Action

So many well-meaning leaders don’t follow through on what they want. They set an intention, write it down, and perhaps declare it to others, but they don’t follow through in their behavior, actions and choices.

What John wants to energize his team and this could have been an ideal time and opportunity.

If you’re in a similar position to John, there are alternatives to repeating the same old actions, month on month, year on year. To discover the, focus single-mindedly on your true goals, not tick-box tasks.

For John, instead of creating an email chain and more documentation, he needs to get all his people in a room, even if it’s a virtual one. 

Energize Your Team By Listening To Them

When you make your strategy sessions a discussion, you're listening to real voices and communicating at a deeper level. Despite some initial logistics and planning, the benefits for you as a leader are huge.

Involve the broader team and bring the other functional teams in. Show people you’re interested. Involve them. 

✅ Doing so means you’ll gain insight into how your team is thinking and how they work together. 

✅ You'll create buy-in and engagement.

✅ You'll iron out issues upfront so they don’t come back to bite you later.

✅ You'll see your key players in action and be able to assess their leadership.

✅ You're creating opportunities for collaboration and innovative solutions.

✅ You'll have one strategy that makes sense and everyone understands. 

✅ In the long run, you'll save time. 

Set some time aside in your diary and get your people together. Don’t treat strategy as a niggling "to do" that should be completed and then forgotten for a while.  Have deeper discussions and use the time to share and create. 

Turn what can be a mundane and bureaucratic exercise into something that can empower and energize your team. 

After all, if the only regular communication your team gets from you is electronic, followed by the occasional call where you do all the talking, you can be easily replaced by another faceless leader.

Start the year as you mean to go on, with well-thought-out connection and true collaboration. Turn routine tasks into opportunities to build powerful, energized teams and watch morale and delivery skyrocket.

Deema Ghata-Aura is a Certified Professional Coach, speaker and workshop facilitator. She supports expats and global leaders to create sustainable success, fulfillment, and real-world results with her highly effective Energy Leadership™️ Executive Coaching Program.

To learn more about her work and engage Deema as your coach, email deema@criterioncoaching.com