You’ve probably heard the old saying that wherever focus goes, the business grows. 

One of the greatest areas of tension I see arise in businesses is when leaders are either unclear on their business priorities (their focus), or otherwise they fail to communicate their focus with their team, becoming endlessly frustrated when they’re unable to achieve growth. 

The solution to all of this is LEADERSHIP and COMMUNICATION. 

You need to make sure everybody is clear on what their role is, what their priorities should be and how that contributes to the overall goals—and growth—of the business. 

Consider this: Could all of your employees complete this sentence “Success in my role looks like……”

Hint: The answer should indicate they know the important role they are playing in working towards your business goals! 

It’s our job as leaders and managers to paint that bigger picture and educate our team so that everybody not only has a clear understanding of what they are doing, but also how that feeds into what the entire business is doing as a whole. 

I know for a long time I was really focused on the numbers in my business. I was focused on what our sales targets needed to be, what we needed to hit and how we were going to do that. While I would talk about that with my team, I don’t think I did a good job of being clear on how they, as individuals, could contribute to the end goal. 

Once I started talking more about how everybody’s roles impacted the bigger picture there was a complete shift in the business. 

I started incentivising staff, for example: “You know, these are the targets that we’re trying to get to. These are the 15 things that you could do that would possibly help that. And if we do this together as a group, then we will get X.”

Staff started rallying behind each other. If they could see somebody else was struggling they would step in and help. They would share ideas and advice and boost one another’s confidence to help each other perform their roles really well. 

This growth would never have happened if we hadn’t all focused on the metrics we were tracking and the targeted outcomes we were trying to reach. 

What are the actions that you know are really going to move the needle in your business. Have you communicated that with your team? 

We often just assume that everyone is “on the same page”, but it’s often not the case. We always had fortnightly staff meetings, but they only ever covered the “surface level” stuff. Now we go deep and we talk about the outcomes. 

We talk about the numbers, we talk about how close we are to targets, we talk about certain customers and how we can better serve them and how we can make sure that their customer experience is going to be exceptional. Importantly, we talk about our priorities and our areas of focus for the weeks ahead. 

I encourage you to think about yourself as a leader and a manager. 

• Are there certain things that you assume that your team knows? 

• Are there certain things that you keep in the back of your mind because you think that everybody should know that (but perhaps you need to articulate more clearly to your team).

• Are there things that would be valuable for your team to know in order to do their job better? 

• Are your staff members’ roles and responsibilities clearly outlined? 

• Are you checking metrics on a regular basis to give your staff an understanding of where they’re at? 

Remember: wherever the focus goes, the business grows. So where will your focus be over the next week or as we head into the end of the year, and can you set time aside to share it with your team? This is a really important time, not just for setting yourself up for next year, but making sure that you finish well and finish strong.