Four pillars

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” –Ralph Nader

A leader is expected to make the people in his/her team become better people based on the strategies he encourages them to use. A team’s productivity is increased when people are held accountable for their actions and keep track of their daily performance. At PassionBiz Academy, we use 4 pillars on a daily basis that ensure tasks are not only performed, but performed well. They act as a form of external pressure.

1. Get aligned

This should be the first item that team members do every day when they get to the office. This particular pillar involves noting down the assignments you intend to carry out on a particular day and sharing the same activity list with your immediate supervisor, team leader or boss. If you are doing official duty outside the office setup, you still should still get aligned with your superior. Due to the fact that it may be difficult to have a face to face meeting with your boss, you can simply send them a text or e-mail. This method ensures that you have a plan for the day and do not get distracted. This makes team members become better at planning.

For a team leader, this pillar allows for clarifications and giving appropriate redirection. If you are a team leader and want your team member to do a different activity from what they planned, you can tell them at this stage to do so.

2. Acknowledge, amend, ask (AAA)

Humans are prone to error. A team member may make a mistake when doing an assignment. The three A’s act as a form of moving forward from a mistake and finding a suitable solution. A team member is expected to acknowledge wrongdoing to their superior, state how they will amend the situation and ask if the suggestion is suitable. If a marketing executive forgets to deliver a product to a client for example, he immediately acknowledges his mistake to his superior, states how he intends to gain the client’s trust back and asks if the solution provided is alright. This pillar is important as it makes team members understand the importance of  prompt damage control and accepting their faults.

3. Follow through to completion (FTC)

This pillar simply emphasizes carrying out assignments till they are done.Activities once started should be done until finished. If you encounter any challenges when carrying out an assignment, kindly note them down. These challenges will act as a reference point in future.

4. Feedback/presentation of work done

This last step involves giving your superior a report on the assignments you managed to complete. In the case that time did not allow for completion of all tasks, you place the remaining task among pending activities when providing feedback. The pending activities are to be completed as soon as possible.

Keeping score of activities to be done and activities completed ensures that an individual performs to their very best. Using this four pillars daily will lead to better organisation in your daily plan as a team player and better understanding of your team’s performance if you are a team leader.

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