Are people born disciplined, or is it developed? If it's developed how do I build discipline into my businesses workforce?
I would argue that discipline isn't natural, it can go against our very nature. We aren't born disciplined it must be forged from hard work and a sense of purpose. It's easy to start making life changes to support making yourself disciplined, but how do you develop and maintain discipline in a workforce?
To build discipline in a team you need to encourage it within your culture. Culture is lead by leadership, so you will have to set the tone from the top down. If the workforce sees you slacking you better believe they will slack too. So here's three ways to build discipline in your teams:
1. Plan and prioritise
Discipline is setting an expectation and ensuring accountability. The best way to achieve discipline in the team setting is to work with them to develop schedules, project plans, personal work plans and deadlines. Make sure this is collaborative and there are ways of highlighting risks, there should also be clear guidelines for errors or failures.
2. Do difficult things
Make fitness and team challenges a part of your work week. Working with people to overcome challenges builds self-belief and the discipline to keep trying in the face of adversity. Paying for a few fitness classes and some challenging events throughout the year are a small price for a disciplined team.
3. Develop accountability
Having all the plans and good intentions won't work if there's no agreement to be accountable. Build accountability into all agreed work and schedules, so everyone understands who is responsible and accountable for positive or negative outcomes. Everyone must be willing to stand up and say they failed or were wrong, it builds safety and inclusion.
So that's my top 3 tips to build a more disciplined team, there's many more but if you can work towards these three, your team will appear to have superpowers compared to those around you.