3 Steps to Build a Higher Performance Team without Adding to Your Workload as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Still juggling team development and daily tasks like they’re two different jobs? What if they didn’t have to be?

As a NGO leader, you’re constantly pulled between delivering on project goals and trying to empower your team. But what if your everyday work could also be a powerful training ground for building a stronger team—without needing extra hours or resources?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• A 3-step framework to start leading more strategically while still getting things done
• How to delegate tasks as you go by creating systems that future-proof your team
• The coaching approach that encourages innovation and independence—without micromanaging

If you're ready to make more impact with less overwhelm, hit play and learn how to turn your daily routine into a leadership advantage.

Resources Mentioned:

Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free Quiz:

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

n today's episode, you'll discover how to fast track creating a strong performing team so you can focus on higher impact work.

Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern NGO leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week, and [00:01:00] today we're gonna talk about how to be more efficient in the way we lead so we can strengthen our team on a daily basis.

So in this episode, you are going to discover why the way most leaders work is not efficient and does not create the results you want, why it's essential to have a vision of the daily work you want to focus on and how it relates to the impact that you want to make, and three steps to strengthen your team on a daily basis. Now in the past, I've talked about how there is no way to rush to success when it comes to strengthening our team.

There is no shortcut to really developing our team. [00:02:00] However there are ways that are more efficient or productive than others. It's like the difference between spending your time on email versus spending your time on more strategic work that you know will lead in the long run to a bigger impact.

I think that, today's episode is important whether you are in the midst of uncertainty during this time, or you are leading as normally as a NGO worker, we tend to see things as silos. And I saw this when I was working in development as a project manager, as a country manager. Every country program I worked was the same way, and that is that

we are focusing our time either on project related [00:03:00] activities that are results driven or people related activities that are development driven. So what I mean by that is, for example, you're either helping to develop a proposal or a budget or working on a project directly, or you are training your team or sending them to trainings.

But I want to get rid of that idea that these things have to be separate and show you a way to become more efficient in how you do things so that you can use your daily tasks as a way of also creating a stronger team while getting things done.

It is not about working more, it's about working differently. And what inspired this episode is something that I already teach a lot, but I recently read this book and it was more about entrepreneurship [00:04:00] and as a business owner working on the business versus in the business.

And the idea was that when we work in the business, we are consumed by the everyday activities. We're just going from task to task according to our email or according to what's on our agenda. But when we work on the business, we are simultaneously not only getting things done, but we're thinking about the future.

We're thinking about how do I set up this, what I'm doing now, so that either I can delegate it in the future or I can make it more efficient? And this is what I want to talk about today.

So once again, when it comes to building or training our team, we can see strengthening our team in one of two ways. The first is we see it as something that we do separately from the everyday work. We see things as [00:05:00] silos, as I said before, and it's less efficient because we are taking time out, which is separate from working on daily tasks in order to build our team. The second way is a way we can integrate team development and strengthening into our daily, everyday routines while also thinking about the vision for the future so that we actually are able to achieve it.

So I'm going to go over now the three step process and how you do that. This way of leading and working really is the way of the modern leader. We need to become more efficient. We need to use our time more wisely, and we need to think more in terms of long-term goals and visions when it comes to our team's development, when it comes to implementing projects, if we're going to make a greater impact and do more with less.

So [00:06:00] the first step of the three step process is to have a vision of the impact that you want. And as you go through your day, think about what how you are doing now is related to that vision. And if you want to continue doing the same thing in the future, or you want to be able to delegate it to someone else.

So in other words, as you're going through your day working on reports, as you are attending meetings, as you are creating budgets, as you are managing budgets, as you are meeting with your team, you are thinking as you do these daily tasks, how do I want this to be handled in the future?

Right now, maybe I am doing it, but in the future, do I want someone else to be able to do it?

And if that's the case, then there's a certain set of [00:07:00] steps that we could put in place to create a system where you are able to delegate it or create a system where technology can can do it. So for example, let's say that you're working on a donor report and you realize that you are doing all the formatting to make it look nice.

You realize that you're spending an hour of your time formatting this donor report. Now at a certain level, that becomes less efficient. It becomes something that either we could get technology to do or it would be a great skillset also for one of your team members to learn and to be able to do.

And so as that task comes up, the first thing you would do is think about, okay, this next task I'm working on is this donor report and formatting this report. [00:08:00] Is this something that in the future I want to do myself, or do I want to delegate it, or how do I want it to be handled in the long run?

And as you decide that, when you have the impact in mind that you want to create, then you have in mind what types of tasks will make the most impact. And I imagine that probably working on formatting for a donor report will not lead you to the impact you want to create.

It's not the most efficient use of your time, and so therefore, you probably do want to delegate it. And if that's the case you could either start that process by, having a team member sit next to you as you are formatting and showing them the process you're doing it in, and also speaking your thoughts behind why you're doing what you're doing.

So essentially like a job sat shadowing kind of situation, or [00:09:00] you could create a video such as using a tool like Loom or there are others that will record you being able to explain what you're doing as you're going through the document and how to do it. So in other words, you're recording your screen and showing the person, whoever will receive the video, how to do that thing.

I found this very efficient myself in helping my VAs, my virtual assistants to take on a certain task that I want to delegate. So once you record that thing, you can send it to them and then they can review it as many times as they need to. But it doesn't take more time out of your day. You've only done it once.

And while you were doing it, you were also getting the thing done. So it's a win-win really. This is the difference between working in your team and working on your [00:10:00] team. Working in your team would just be getting the thing done without even thinking about the future, or if you want to delegate it in the future. Working on your team is doing the task with in mind is this something I want my team to take on in the future?

And if it is, let me go ahead and document how I'm doing it and put a system in place so that I can start to delegate it. So that's the difference. Another thing to keep in mind is if you need to make resources available for a future position that may not even exist yet in order to take on a particular responsibility.

So if you have the ability to apply for more funding or ask for maybe to restructure a certain position or whatever, documenting certain tasks or activities that you feel like could be the responsibility of a [00:11:00] sole person, like of, of a completely new position that you want to create. And in that case, you can also write down in a Word document I

what that person would be responsible for. So essentially you're creating a job description, for the future, but also once again, creating a video or something that would be essentially a training to show that person eventually in the future, what they would be taking on.

I hear a lot of times leaders say, well, I really would like to have more resources for this or more human resources, and that's great, but we also need to justify that, and that's where this can come in handy is if you have enough work to justify a whole new position and you've already created a job description and you already have videos which can train that person, it can be really, really valuable in terms [00:12:00] of being able to put that into place in the future because you have this intentionality and because you know, it will help you lead to creating your vision or your impact.

So the first thing is to have a vision of the impact that you want, and as you go through your day thinking about what you're doing and what you want to maybe delegate or have someone else take on. Number two is to create systems as you go so as you realize that you want to delegate something or have someone else take it over in the future to go ahead and make the video or, have them job shadow you so you can immediately start to build or strengthen them and their capacity or their ability to be able to take on that thing.

Number three is using coaching as a leadership style.

So an everyday way of leading. [00:13:00] And this is something that I also teach in the course, which registration is open now, if you're interested, the course is called Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader. I teach how to use coaching as a leadership style, so this means that whenever possible you use coaching skills to empower your team to come up with their own ideas and their own solutions.

So, for example, if someone comes to you and they say that they're struggling to get high quality data during monitoring and evaluation, rather than give them ideas on how they should proceed or give them advice, ask them for the solutions. And this actually was something that happened with one of my students, this exact scenario.

And when she asked them for solutions, she was surprised that they actually came up with [00:14:00] ideas that were better than she could have had herself. And she used the powerful questions from the course and the ability to really listen and to question their assumptions in order to strengthen their solutions so that they were ready to act.

And by doing this, you're automatically not only, getting more diverse ideas and, and innovation, but you're also strengthening the confidence of your team and really allowing them to take on more responsibility. And this is not something that you would do as a separate thing. This is something that you would do as a way of leading.

So once again first step to have the vision of what you want to create and what you want to spend your time on so that you can decide what you want to delegate or what you [00:15:00] want your team to focus on more. Number two, put systems in place and create as you go. So rather than doing this as a separate training or or exercise as you're working, document what you're doing so that you can just give that to your team.

And number three, use coaching as a leadership style so that you encourage your team to start thinking for themselves, become more independent, and by default, become more confident and a stronger performing team. So it all really comes down to being mindful about how you are working. So rather working in your team where we are lost in all the day-to-day activities and just go from one thing to the next, you're working on your team where you're constantly thinking about what are the [00:16:00] types of activities that I want to delegate? Where do I want my team to grow stronger, and how can I show them during the workday, during the things and activities that we're already doing? Whether as a way of leading or just having them shadow me or documenting through a loom video or something like that. How to do those things so that we can start to delegate them and start to hand them over and create a stronger performing team on a daily basis?

So as you go through your day, think of the bigger picture. Try to get out of the day-to-day tasks and think of how does this relate to the longer term vision of what I want, what I want my team to look like, what I want to have, in terms of my own workload and tasks, and how, I want my [00:17:00] team to strengthen and grow?

And by doing that, find opportunities while you are working in order to achieve those goals.

That's it for this week, and once again, registration is open for the May course, Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader. If you want to learn skills that will make you more productive and help you to empower and strengthen your team, then please go to the link in the show notes for more information or to register.

The course will start May 6th. Alright, until next week, keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's [00:18:00] working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for it.