One secret is to focus on activities and results instead of individual people as much as possible. Consider using a scale of 1 – 10 for the progress of a project. Ask your folks how they would rate the progress or result on that scale. This gives you both a measuring point for later down the road. More importantly, it helps to objectively separate the person from the project.
The objective is to find the gap and understand what your team sees as the gap.Only then can you truly manage the task. You may discover they are missing an important element, or that they have an insight you never saw from your perspective. Either way, this scale becomes the roadmap for moving things forward. What’s more, it’s a language that inherently shows your team that you value their opinion and analysis.