Let’s dive into some delicious leadership training.

This week’s blog will help team leaders who are struggling to move a project move forward. Keep reading if you are the leader of a team and you notice that your project results are halted or experiencing false starts.

Let’s start by breaking down the #1 mistake I see leaders make when the results aren’t coming in:

They focus on reading the game.

What do I mean by that?

When the results aren’t there, leaders tend to start with looking at the process and what’s wrong with it. As soon as you begin to see the process as wrong, your only possible outcome is to try to fix it. Typically, those fixes come in the form of adding even more work. You add more milestones, you create more check-ins. You may become stricter with your team, or even more demanding.

It’s great to strive for excellence. But when the lack of results feels significant, the common pitfall is raising the standard on the people you work with in a way that is disempowering. You add more work, you add more hours, you put all of your focus on what isn’t working, and you bring your frustration to the team. You may even come off as mean or condescending.

Does this sound familiar?

My recommendation is to shift your focus. Stop reading the game, and start reading your team. Focus on your key players and see what is missing for them to be able to deliver the results you know they’re capable of producing.

Let’s walk through some examples.

Amid COVID-19, people are officially feeling the “virtual fatigue.” Your team may miss break room chitchat or Happy Hour Wednesdays. They miss hanging out and unwinding. They are in need of connection. If you can pick up on exhaustion and loneliness, your next step is to infuse your team with the connection they are missing. You could start a virtual happy hour, or begin each meeting with a way to connect that has nothing to do with work.

Perhaps in taking a look at your team, you notice that they have become very serious about the lack of results. Everything feels significant. Everything feels like hard work. There is no longer any enthusiasm directed towards the goal you are working on. To me, that’s a huge sign that it’s time to infuse the team with some playfulness. Turn the project into a game—create a scoreboard, or even inject some friendly, purposeful competition. Create whatever will inspire your team to have some fun with their work.

As a final example, maybe when you start to read the team, what you notice is they have picked up your habits. Specifically, they are chronically looking for what is wrong and what is not working. This is the trickiest thing to notice, because there will be a part of you that agrees with that logic! “Go fix the problem!” you think.

Consider, however, that this behavior also indicates that your team needs to be infused with some celebration. Specifically, purposefully practice celebrating and acknowledging what is going well.

Here is my invitation: If you are a leader who is currently experiencing false starts or complete halts in results, notice where you go to try to find resolution. Pivot from reading the process and trying to diagnose what’s wrong to reading your team and seeing what they uniquely need that will change how it’s going.

When you do this, you will create partnership, fun, and a better pulse on how things are going with your team.