Failure to Give Clear Direction And Vision

Imagine this scenario: one of your team has just completed an important project, or is halfway through, and it’s only then that you realize they are doing it wrong. Perhaps they’re using the wrong resources or they completely misunderstood what you wanted… is it necessarily their fault?

Most new managers at one point or another have faced this, or will come across it, and I’d like to fire a shot across your bow now… you may think the employee is stupid, incompetent, incapable, or just downright poor at their job BUT you must take some responsibility here.

Yes, I’m aware that we’ve already talked about a manager’s personal responsibility in mistake five, but it is potentially at the heart of numerous errors that managers can make in several different guises. You see, even if you pride yourself on taking your own mistakes on the chin (thus being responsible), you are still letting your employees down if you don’t give clear direction and share your vision.

In the example above, for instance, you should have made sure the employee understood your guidelines before they started the project. You should certainly have seen the error way before now; that tells me that you are too ‘hands off’ and are not keeping in touch with your employees. We’ve already talked about the dangers of that, haven’t we?

Your team needs to know your priorities; how else can they effectively manage their time? If everything is equally important, or seemingly relaxed, they will start to believe that there are no priorities.

Similarly, they may begin to feel that they have never actually completed a full task or achieved a set goal; you’re robbing them of much-needed adrenalin and the satisfaction of a job well done. If you don’t think this is a problem, re-read our motivation chapter because you certainly need help in that regard!

The Solution

Strong effective leaders do not leave people feeling rudderless. This can apply to an individual’s day-to-day priorities and tasks, as much as it can to establishing direction for the team and department as a whole.

Taking the time to set and communicate goals will stop employees simply muddling through.

You’re the manager; it’s your job to determine the goals for your department, considering how they filter into the company’s achievements as a whole. This is ‘the vision’.

As Stephen Covey says in his seminal book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the first habit is to be proactive. The second is to begin with the end in mind, to know where you want to go and what you want to achieve so that you can work towards it.

Some Practical Steps on Setting Goals:

• If you are not used to setting goals, you could do worse than follow the SMART rule of goal setting –  making sure all goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely/with clear beginning and end points.
• Start simply and identify one thing that you can do today to clarify your expectations for the individuals in your team.
• Ensure your goals also tally with the company’s overall strategy.
• Demonstrate and explain the goals to your team and get their buy-in. You need to ensure they understand, accept and are committed to the goals. Indeed, asking for their opinions and ideas in team meetings will hopefully help you to develop a departmental vision together.
• It’s easy to forget longer term goals in the busy day to day, so make sure you have a copy of them available in a noticeable place, perhaps a notice board in the break room.
• Make sure you also give each person a personal copy of their own goals and revisit them every six months to a year.
• Support the achievement of goals with rewards, whether it’s a day out for the team, a free night out, additional responsibility or company-wide recognition.
• Ensure the goals are challenging but achievable; as with our SMART goals above, make sure the goals you set are reachable and are within a person’s control.