7 Tips for Raising the Productivity of your Team

Top consultant Susan M. Heathfield, who serves as HR expert for the website About.com, suggests the following seven ways in which you can encourage positive, powerful self-expectations in the employees on your team.

1. Provide increasingly challenging assignments for your team members. (Make sure employees succeed at each level before moving forward.)

2. Enable each team member to participate in potentially successful projects that bring continuous improvement to the workplace.

3. Provide one-on-one coaching for your team members. (This coaching should emphasize improving what the employee does well rather than focusing on weaknesses.)

4. Provide developmental opportunities that reflect what the employee is interested in learning about.

5. Assign successful senior employees to play a developmental mentoring role with team members.

6. Hold frequent, positive verbal interactions with team members, and communicate consistently your firm belief in each employee's ability to perform the job. Keep feedback positive and developmental where possible.

7. Make sure team members receive consistent messages from other supervisory personnel. How you speak about employees to others powerfully molds their opinions.

Employee & Leadership Training, Employee Assessments, and Team Building Activities are all great tools for increasing the productivity of you team.