4 Types of Team Members and how to Develop their Maximum Potential
I’m sure when working with your team you have noticed that different people are at different levels of skill, ability, or mindset, so how do you teach and train them? I’ve been taught over the years that if you treat everyone the same you’re treating them wrong. In my opinion there are many ways to distinguish where people in your team are at, and what type of coaching they need to hit the next level, but I will focus on 4 types that they can fall into and how to work with them.
1. Enthusiastic Beginner – This like the title suggests is someone who just joined your organization. They are most likely new and excited, but have very little skills or abilities in the field and little to no experience. This type you want to focus on simply giving them direction. Most people are used to being told what to do, through elementary school, high-school, college, their job, everyone has usually been told where to be and what to do and when. You can simply follow the same pattern while working with these people since direction is what they are looking for. This can be a great time to get them in contact with a mentor with success in your field of business! I like to think of it like a blacksmith forging red hot steel, the blade is red hot and ready to be molded you simply need to shape it into the perfect end result. I suggest doing a game plan call with these people and someone more successful to mentor and guide them and answer any questions they may have.
2. Disillusioned Learner – This is someone in your team that has most likely been around for a few months to a year and isn’t experiencing the results they want. With this person you will need to focus on coaching. My plan is often to ask them how things are going, how their results have been, and just ask probing questions. They are most likely missing some technical aspects or if they made simple tweaks to what they are doing, they would get drastically better results. Again this will take time but it will be worth it. You can take someone who doesn’t produce much for the organization and help empower them to become one of the key leaders in your team. The more questions you ask them to find out exactly where they are at, the better you can find a solution for them. Many times these people are not being very teachable, so a good way to help them through their plateau is to bring up past mistakes you have made when you were in their situation and how you overcame that. If you attack yourself and your mistakes and explain how you remedied them, you will bring their guard down and give you an opportunity to teach them the solution as well.
3. Cautious Completer – This person most likely is a slow mover in your organization. They are probably the most supportive of any of your team members, always willing to play team and help out. The only downside is they rarely take action and take on tasks on their own. With this type of person the main thing they need is support and encouragement. Most likely they are lacking belief in themselves that they can do to job or be successful. With these team members a great thing to do is cast vision of where they could be if they stick with the system and work hard. They need to know they are no different than other successful people in the organization and that the only difference is time and work ethic. If you can encourage them often and when they do take action and get results recognize it publicly to your other team members. People will work for a living but die for recognition. You want to celebrate what you want to duplicate, focus on positive reinforcement and every step forward recognize and continue to empower these team members.
4. Self-Reliant Achiever – These people are the aggressive go getters of the team. They usually have experience, confidence is not an issue and they are ready to take action. With these people you want to give them responsibility. Focus on constantly challenging them and giving them more tasks to complete. This is a great group to give contests to or to put in competition with others in the team. They are most likely to be the most competitive in your team and like winning and being the best. You can feed off of those desires and help them to become one of the top producers in the organization. Always be giving them bigger challenges to tackle and more responsibility to handle. If they don’t feel challenged or like they have some degree of importance to the organization, they will go somewhere else where they do. Recognition is also key with these people, they usually want to be the best and love being recognized for it. The more you can feed into that the better.
We are in the business of people, so the better you can get at recognizing how different people can fit into your team and be developed to their maximum potential the faster your team will experience explosive growth.
Wishing you Health and Prosperity – Mike MacDonald
www.facebook.com/BreakingLimitsSuccessCoaching
