Become a Better Interim Executive by Connecting with Employees

If you want to get something done, you need to be able to communicate with the team. Become a better interim executive by understanding your employees.

There are more ways than one to become a better interim executive, but the best way to start is with the people you are managing. Because an organization is only as good as the people running it.

Accept responsibility

A major cause of management trouble is when employees don’t take ownership of tasks. It leads to gaps in tasks management and you often find yourself with areas uncovered by anyone. Responsibility of tasks need to be made clear from the get-go. Whenever a grey area is encountered, don’t delay in making somebody responsible for managing it. Make it clear that employees need to take ownership of what they do in the broader domain.

Understand how your employees process information

It’s important to understand how your employees best comprehend information. If they are more visual, then use images, videos and graphs to visualize your message. An auditory individual would benefit from one-on-one meetings and phone calls. Others may be more satisfied with text messages or email. While some prefer to process information through feelings which requires you to provide experiences like site visits and product testing to get your message across.

Working with teams

It’s important for an interim executive to work well with teams. There are push and pull methods to getting along with your team to achieve an objective. Logic is a push method that identifies the loopholes in an idea and then offers solutions to filling them, while the more prevalent carrot-and-stick method is also effective – where rewards are given as incentives and threats of penalties if a task is not completed. Pull methods include consultative groups where ideas are pooled and discussed.

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