Inherited Staff? 6 Ways to Get to A Shared Vision
Pay attention at meetings. Meetings are organizations in miniature: Be clear what you want to accomplish. Create agendas--as normal as that sounds, your colleagues may not have experienced regular agendas. Assign a note taker. Assign tasks. Follow up at the next meeting.
When staff talks about previous projects, programs or exhibits, ask how they were tracked. Through data, anecdote, both, neither?
Be transparent, authentic and clear. Listen.
Use the Heath Brothers' concept of mining the bright spots*. Look at staff successes and parse how and why they worked. Understand. Repeat.
Check in with staff often. Does their work have meaning?
Recalibrate when possible, pointing out how differences in approach mean differences in result.Joan Baldwin *Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Make Change When Change is Hard.
