At the core of any organization is a desire to achieve revenue targets and in most cases, create innovative products or provide exceptional services that are in demand within the marketplace. But the path by which a company gets there can sometimes be wrought with misdirection, high turnover and unaligned values. Poor leadership may not communicate clear values, business priorities or understand the need for employee motivation, which is why it’s critical to ensure that a strong management team is in place to fulfill an organization’s goals.
Building such a team starts by establishing an understanding of the lifecycle of the company, recognizing why it may or may not be making the desired revenue and determining what’s going on underneath that can become an unintentional factor in the strength or detriment of the organization. There are several ways human resources and senior leadership can help create a powerful management team to work toward achieving organizational objectives:
Go Back to Basics
It’s important to understand the vision of the company, whether from a board, CEO, holding group or sole owner. Every organization differs, but there are often a few common themes in many companies, including maintaining revenue, growth and the style of the business. Prior to building a management team that aims to work toward these goals, identification is critical.
Think About Three Years From Now
After aligning the vision behind the organization, the future comes into play. HR leaders tend to think commercially in terms of income, revenue, efficiencies and scalability. To address the needs of a growing management team and workforce, it’s important to think about the next three years and the gaps in the workforce that must be filled to get there. Again, in this case, it’s critical to align priorities with those of the owner/shareholder of the company. This enables hiring decisions to be made based on how leaders approach challenges, build a company culture and set forth to achieve desirable results.
Determine What Drives Employees Forward
True leaders have the ability to harness the strengths of their employees and communicate effectively and build on this.
However, it also takes insight into what drives them forward to achieve this. As a leader, it’s important to understand what people like about their roles, their managers, the business — and what they don’t care for. A leader should always be able to understand what drives and motivates employees, as well as how their personal vision matches the company and its business goals. Many times, taking time to have these critical conversations can uncover a workforce that is out of sync with management or a senior team that isn’t leading successfully, which can help identify problem areas and be used to address them in a proactive manner.
Build Up Internal Talent and Culture
Leadership can often be built from established teams by taking the time to get to know someone’s goals and what drives them. This is especially true when you have built a culture that helps hire some of the most talented people in the industry and have given them an environment to do their best work. Every leader wants to hire the best individuals for their team, and often this is only based on technical or academic ability. However, they should also consider the type of person who will embrace their company culture and be as passionate about the products, services and company as the rest of the management team. Building a culture of teamwork and collaboration can help hire some of the smartest and creative people and give them an environment where they can work with purpose, and to drive creativity and innovation.
Conversely, some managers may be in the wrong role due to technical ability albeit having a strong cultural fit within the company and may thrive in another position. It can take a time for management to identify those individuals, assess their core strengths, consider potential problem areas, and undergo the development needed to enable the company to harness their strengths and drive added value. HR can be a business partner from the start and be used in determining internal employees that are ready for more leadership roles within the company.
Focus on Vision
At the core of an organization is its culture, and finding leaders who fit within the scope of that is critical to the success of a business. Some ideal goals to set may be flexible working, space for employees to grow and make mistakes, and to create an environment where management listen to ideas and differing opinions. Establishing a clear path toward a fixed employee culture has to start with the management team’s leadership and positive reinforcement from the top to the bottom of the organization.
The task of building an amazing management team is not one that is simple but can be achieved with the appropriate amount of effort and care. The process starts by determining a clear vision for an organization and taking the time necessary to identify leaders that embody these principles and can guide a workforce toward achieving these goals. This is done through aligning ideas, identifying what drives employees forward, building and training internal talent, and focusing on developing a company culture that the entire organization lives and breathes. 
