Are You Setting The Pace for Your Team?

As a business owner or business leader you have priorities and objectives that you need to achieve. Are you off running your own race trying to achieve those objectives on your own or are you setting the pace for your team of employees to support you in achieving those objectives.

Today in much of the coaching and advising I do with clients I talk about “setting the pace,” a reflection back to my early days in working for a very strict and one dimensional leader. Having spent two decades leading and motivating individuals, now working with other leaders to do the same, I wanted to share some of the best practices I’ve found that ensure highly motivated and productive employees.

Think about a NASCAR race. As the race begins, the pace car sits out in front of all the cars for a reason. It’s there to get everybody heading in the right direction, at the right speed, at the right time. That’s the essence of the best possible race. By doing this, everybody can pick up speed and reach top speed quickly.

This is what we want to achieve in business.

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Consider these three things for setting the pace:

1. Do your employees connect their priorities with the vision and objectives of the company? Help them make that connection. They need to understand what you’re trying to achieve and why it’s important to achieve it.

2. Participate and interact with your employees. If you’re on the road all the time traveling, or you sit in an office that’s separate from all of the employees, how do you know what they’re working on? How do you know what challenges they are experiencing in trying to achieve your objectives? You need to be out there having conversations understanding what’s going on.

3. You need to synchronize the team. Think about the cars on the racetrack. If there was no pace car, what would happen? Some cars would turn into one another, some cars would speed off quick, some would hang back. They may not even make one lap.

If you’re not trying to synchronize your employees, all of different skill sets and mind sets, towards your vision you’re going to have a problem. People will work in different directions doing different things at different times. Focus on synchronization of your team.

In this brief video I discuss why it’s important for every leader to “set the pace” of their team, and specifically how to do this.

Business is a race. It’s a race to be the best, the most profitable, the most successful and it’s a race you need to win. As a leader really think about how you can set the pace for your team rather than run your own race.

For more tips on leadership and creating a workplace full of engaged employees who are committed to your vision, grab a copy of my book Operational Empowerment.

© Shawn Casemore 2014. All rights reserved.