Instilling a sense of urgency

How to get your team to pick up the pace, when an important outcome is on the line.

Sep 26, 2024

👋 Howdy! Claire here, CEO of Canopy. If you’ve been enjoying reading my original writing here, I wanted to share two other ways to gain even deeper leadership insights…

(1) Receive free daily leadership tips when you sign-up for Canopy (and receive them on your phone if you download our free iOS app along with it). Learn more about Canopy here 🌿

(2) Work with me personally and our team to implement a custom leadership training program for your internally-promoted managers, based on our past decade of research. Learn more about Canopy for Teams here 🏔️

A senior leader recently asked me:

“I have a big deadline approaching, and I need our team to kick things into another gear. How exactly do I do this without being completely overbearing on my team?”

You may be asking yourself the very same question right now. It’s a natural, after all, as we approach the last quarter of the year. (This time in September through to Thanksgiving is famously a sprint for many of us, as we look to close out the year.) You may be feeling a sense of urgency to get all the things done you wanted for 2025…

But how exactly do you instill this same sense of urgency in your team?

Imagine the ideal

First, let’s take a look at the exact behavior that we want to be true of our team.

What do we really mean when we say we want to “see our team act with more urgency”?

Practically, when we talk about instilling a sense of urgency, what we’re really describing is our team moving toward a goal with a sense of self-motivation and self-direction.

Not waiting around to be told what to do, they are proactively solving problems on their own. Raising their hands when they get stuck.

Vigorous in pursuing the goal, they are resilient when they face an obstacle. Undeterred when things get hard, they do whatever it takes to see something through.

This is what a real sense of urgency looks like.

So how do we turn this "ideal into reality?

The 4 understandings

Imagining the ideal may feel like wishful thinking.

But when we peel back the layers, we uncover some key understandings…

If we want our team to demonstrate these ideal behaviors of urgency, the following then must be true of our team:

They have to want the achieve the goal, for themselves. Studies have shown that a high level of performance and persistence is highly correlated with intrinsic motivation. And so the goals need to be connected to something your team members personally care about for them to feel instigated to move with urgency. (What they personally care about could be a sense of challenge, level of impact, receiving recognition, etc.)
They have to believe there is some consequence of if the goal is or is not achieved. Something must be at stake –meaningful impact that is created, potential upside enabled if the goal is achieved, or marked loss if the goal is not. Otherwise, the goal doesn’t carry any weight.
They have to believe that the outcome of this goal is connected to something they care about. The consequence of the goal’s outcome must feel personally relevant, as well. The extra concerted effort and tenacity must feel worth it.
They have to understand the bigger picture of why the goal is set this way to begin with. The goal has to make sense the context of their work, and not feel arbitrarily set.

I call these the four understandings to unlock urgency: The necessary beliefs your team must have to act with earnest urgency when you have a goal.

Without these understandings, the goal feels fickle. Your team may feel “this is just some random goal set to light a fire under my feet” – and so ultimately, “the goal doesn’t really matter.”

Or, worse, your team may resort to assuming, “I can coast and procrastinate my work because we’ll just have to sprint and work hard anyway at the end.” They might think to themselves, “Why waste all that energy now by working hard the entire time?”

This line of thinking emerges from the above understandings not being established. As a leader, it’s our responsibility to make the 4 understandings are made known to your team.

Here’s exactly how you can do that…

Unlocking urgency

Based on these 4 understandings, you’ll want to do the following to instill a sense of urgency in your team:

Step 1: Understand what it is that each person on your team personally cares about.

We all show up to work each day, yes, to receive a paycheck. And often, there’s also something more. Something that energizes us, that give us a sense of satisfaction.

For some, it may be the desire to solve a challenging problem. For others, it’s to be helpful and have an impact.

Identifying the motivating force for each team member is critical in order to instill a sense of urgency. Without it, there is no impetus for urgency in the first place.

You might already have a sense of what it is that is most motivating for each team member… So take note of that.

And if you don’t know. be sure to ask.

You can figure out the motivating force for each team member by directly asking questions such as:

What would you say is most motivating for you at work?
When do you feel the greatest sense of satisfaction and meaning at work?
What project last year did you work on that you found most fulfilling? Why was that?

You can preface this by sharing your intention behind these questions, too, so the they don’t seem so out of the blue when you do ask. For example: “I’d love to make sure I’m as helpful as I can be to you as possible as a leader. And so as a result, was curious about…?”

Step 2: Connect what they care about with what is at stake.

Once you have a sense of the personal motivations of each team member (sometimes, they are all each very distinct things), then you’ll want to draw a connection for how the goal itself relates to what they care about.

This then roots the goal in a frame of reference that matters to them, personally.

For example:

Let’s say you’re launching a new product – and you need your team to show greater urgency to get this done on time.

If you know someone on your team is motivated by a challenge, you can lean into describing the intellectual challenge of the product, and how it’ll require real attention to overcome those aspects. You might even offer that this is challenging goal, and something you specifically wanted this person to work because you know how much they’re up for and are motivated by a challenge.

Another example:

Alternatively, say someone else on your team is motivated by being helpful and recognized by peers as competent. If that’s the case, they you might describe how the new product launch is being relied on by others in the organization. How helpful it’ll be to other people getting their work done, and how it’ll make their lives easier. You might also share that this is a product launch that everyone in the organization will have visibility of, and something that the entire organization will appreciate.

Of course, these are merely examples. What’s most important is that you are authentic in describing this connection — and aren’t artificially manufacturing a connection if there isn’t one.

If there isn’t a natural connection between the goal and what someone might personally care about, you can then lean further into the next step.

Step 3: Make it clear what’s at stake.

Be warned: This is the easiest step to skip.

Why? Because what’s at stake seems so self-evident to us.

You may be thinking: “Well, obviously, we need to launch this new product on time, because if we don’t then our market position is at risk – which means the health of the company (and our very own jobs) could be in jeopardy as well.”

You palpably feel what’s at stake. Your team, however, does not.

This isn’t of any malicious intent or ineptness on your team’s part. Rather, oftentimes, your team does not have the information that you have. They may not understand how central the new product launch is connected to company financials (and the precarious financial state of the company is in). Or they may not understand how the new product interacts with other departments and the service that customers receive.

It’s up to us as leaders to share that context — to show how things fit into the bigger picture. To help the goal make sense.

For example, you might say:

“This project is critical, and we’ll want to move with a real sense of urgency because the rest of the company needs it in order to function. We’ll cause a delay for everyone else and slow down work, which then means worse service for our customers, as they’re the ones who will be really waiting. I know how much we all care about making sure our customers aren’t being let down — and so the more that we can stick to our timeline or even track ahead of it, the better position we’ll be in to truly serve our customers.”

Now you’re not trying to fan flames of fear, but rather are focused on sharing information accurate information that gives significance to the goal. To show the goal isn’t being set on a whim, but in response to certain realities.

This helps their understanding of why they should act with any urgency, to begin with.

Step 4: Repeat + reinforce the message.

All messages eventually fade. And so, repetition and reinforcement is critical if you want a sense of urgency to be embraced.

This doesn’t necessarily mean verbatim repeating yourself 24/7 — but finding ways to integrate the message in as many touch points with your team as possible.

For example:

During your All-Team Meetings, have an agenda item that reiterates the goal, why it’s set the way it is, the implications of completing it on time, how progress is tracked, and why it matters to continue be pursuing it an aggressive pace.
During your 1:1 Meetings with your team, make sure to re-emphasize the connection between the goal and what the person individually cares about.
In your communication systems (e.g., Slack, MS Teams, Notion, Asana, Basecamp, etc), when the project is being discussed, be sure to tie it back to why the goal matters and the consequences of the goal.

A matter of perspective

Urgency is in the eye of the beholder.

What seems urgent to you might not seem as urgent to everyone else. And while that may feel frustrating as a leader, this difference in perspective opens an opportunity…

Instilling a sense of urgency is merely about helping to orient your team’s perspective. To help them see why they should pick up the pace – and how it in fact serves them, personally, and the team.

You are meeting your direct reports where they’re at and connecting to what they care about.

There’s no brute force or threats brandished. No manipulative mind games are needed here.

A simple transference of perspective is where you’ll get greater understanding. It’s understanding that unlocks urgency, after all – four understandings in particular:

They have to want the achieve the goal, for themselves.
They have to believe there is some consequence of if the goal is or is not achieved.
They have to believe that the outcome of this goal is connected to something they care about.
They have to understand the bigger picture of why the goal is set this way to begin with.

Take these understandings with you, as you look to instill a sense of urgency.

I look forward to hearing how you move forward in applying this, to your own team.

-Claire

✨ For a deeper dive, be sure to check out Setting Goals & Expectations in Canopy. And if you’re keen to share best practices like this with all your managers, we personally design custom leadership training programs, including on feedback and performance conversations. Learn more here.

💚 If you’ve been enjoying reading my original writing here, I wanted to share two other ways to gain even deeper leadership insights…

(1) Receive free daily leadership tips when you sign-up for Canopy (and receive them on your phone if you download our free iOS app along with it). Learn more about Canopy here 🌿

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