Contributor Safety

1. Rotate the conducting of meetings.
One of the most powerful ways to empower others to contribute is by allowing them to conduct team meetings. Traditionally, the leader conducts the meeting, but if you rotate that assignment, your team members will gain greater confidence to contribute. Simply giving them the assignment acknowledges their ability to do the job. Of course you will need to help them prepare the agenda and coach them through the process.

2. Clarify roles.
More complexity requires greater teamwork, and yet more role ambiguity causes people to make assumptions about how to contribute. Clarify roles at the beginning to reduce both anxiety and ambiguity. You will need to do this periodically to ensure role clarity.

3. Recognize accomplishment.
Certainly accomplishment is its own reward, but receiving genuine recognition from your peers makes it all the sweeter. As a leader, recognize the successes of your team quickly. Never delay and never resent the opportunity. the successes of others and show genuine excitement for their accomplishments.

4. Don’t correct with anger, blame, or shame.
Things won’t always go right. People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are due to complacency and carelessness. Even in that situation, don’t correct with anger, blame, or shame. Any kind of public ridicule is off limits. Instead, coach the person to see their mistakes and help them take responsibility for them. Even candid, corrective feedback can be given respectfully.

5. Identify stall points.  
There are times when your team members don’t know what to do or how to proceed, and they may be embarrassed to ask what to do. Try to anticipate and identify when this happens. Rather than making them feel poorly about it, engage with them, ask them what they think the next steps should be. Make it safe for them to be in this stalled situation.

6. Celebrate small wins.
Small wins increase confidence and build momentum. When your team members see a series of small wins, it creates a sense of forward motion. Ultimate success may be a way off, but small wins represent success at intervals and progress toward your goal. It’s the small wins that fuel the team members’ efforts to continue contributing at a high level.

7. Shift from tell to ask.
A leader’s coaching continuum ranges from telling at one end to asking at the other. A good leader uses the entire continuum. Too much telling breeds dependency and learned helplessness. Shift as much as you can to the ask end. Lead through questions more than answers.

8. Share your values.
Your values define you and what’s important to you. They always define the way you want to work. Share your values with your team and have them share theirs with you. This is the first important step in defining the ground rules and terms of engagement for a team.

9. Share your workstyle and communication preferences.
Beyond your values, share your workstyle and communication preferences with your team. Have your team members share theirs as well. We each have a different workstyle and communication preferences based on our individual personalities. Most of these styles and preferences aren’t wrong; they are just different. The better you understand the styles and preferences of your team members, the more effectively you’ll be able to work together.

10. Create conditions for peak engagement.
We’ve all had peak engagement experiences in professional life, times when we’re in the groove and doing our best work. When did this happen to you? Share this with your team. Have them share their peak engagement experiences with each other. As you try to create peak engagement conditions for each other, it will foster greater contribution by team members.