Best Practices in Team Management

Are you the type of manager who wants your people to succeed? Are you happy when they experience success? Or are you the type that constantly looks over your shoulders hoping that no one will pip you to the post? For this, you require leadership and team building qualities.

The best managers delight in the success of their teams. They enhance their job skills and job competencies. They realize that their success depends upon everybody’s achievements and they know that the more the team evolves and grows the more it will achieve. Here are some tips which can make you become a deft manager.

Acknowledge Your Team:

Get out from behind your desk and start walking around the shop floor and tell your people they are valued by stopping to chat, praise etc.

Ask for advice:

You will be surprised at what people can tell you. Never discount anyone’s knowledge- use it to your advantage. You will be astonished to know their skills.

Let others shine:

You have to be able to give others the message that you are fallible. Let them feel that you may not have all the qualities but with their support, you will succeed. Never forget that motivated people are more likely to do a better job. Also use other sorts of motivational strategies for employee motivation.

Arouse team support:

Don’t create dissension between team members or let members of the team create it amongst themselves rather use team building exercises to enrich their team building qualities and skills.

Humor it all takes:

Show your team your lighter side. There is nothing like a good laugh to blow away those cares. It is a secret law of attraction.

Lead by example

Getting people to do your bidding may be what some call effective leadership. But beware! Leadership by trickery is what will make your team unduly suspicious of you. If you want to develop a long term foundation for leadership, then take the larger picture into account and think about how your actions will impact your colleagues and the company you work for. Thus, to build a foundation of trust, you must act with integrity.

This means that you have to keep your promises. Leaders often make commitments when they are in a friendly mood and then forget about them or don’t follow them through. Once, however, you have the reputation of meaning what you say, you will automatically increase your integrity amongst your colleagues and co-workers.

However, a word of warning. If and when you commit to something, make sure that you put it within the correct time span. You can not promise someone a promotion and leave it in the air. You have to assure the employee of the time as well.

It could very well happen that despite your very best efforts, a promise you made does not come through. The best way to handle this situation is to be upfront and honest about it, and tell the person the truth. If you hide and prevaricate, it will only damage your reputation. Do not apologize and try to come up with some other way to work things out, because you will cut a sorry figure.

Always Keep Your Word

Promises are important in any relationship, but in business, they are especially important. Forgetting promises erodes trust. This will affect you and your business in the long run. That is why “give to get,” is the mantra of most successful business houses.

The fact remains that the better assisted you are by an affiliation of varied business and personal contacts, the better you will be able to perform in today’s fast-paced environment. Plus, the better equipped you will be to initiate change if and when the need arises. The professional contacts you build during the various stages of your career will enable you to maintain an active flow of business information.

However in all this, remember, never to renege on your promises. Think about it: in an expensive moment, you might have committed one of your products at a heavy discount to someone. But the next day, you realize your folly and try to get out of the deal. This is the worst thing you could do.

Fulfill your promises even if it means that you could be out of pocket temporarily. In the long term, you could get something more valuable from the person you made the deal with.

As author Steven Covey has said in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, “ I had enough credit in my ‘emotional bank account’ to tide me over.”

How to become a successful entrepreneur?

You can succeed in your venture as an entrepreneur if you possess the five key entrepreneurial skills: Concentration, Organization, Discrimination, Innovation and Communication.

Concentration: This is nothing but single minded focus on a specific objective. If you are not focused, nothing will get done. You will have to put all your energy into getting your business on the road and work towards your goal dedicatedly. Plan three things to do everyday and ensure that they get done. If you are faced with a crisis, deal with it with determination.

Organize: If you are not organized, your business will flounder. You must have a system that works. Your accounts, for example must be up to date. Your order must be at hand. You must be able to take more orders and deliver them effectively and efficiently. All this comes under organization and you must be prepared to cope with and outdo competition.

Discrimination: This means that you have to differentiate between the important and the unimportant. Remember the Pareto’s 80/20 principle: 20 percent of anything will bring 80 percent of the results. You thus have to discriminate between the 20 and the 80 percent. Let’s take an example, suppose you have a team member who is in the 20 percent bracket and is causing you no ends of problems. The solution- let the person go. If you have an employee who brings lots of business, focus your energy on him/her.

Innovate: Think of ways in which you can better do things. This also suggests that you are constantly being creative, thinking of how to get new clients, beef up your internal and external operations.

Communicate: This means that you must be able to get your point of view across effectively. When it boils down to business, you can not afford to have people not listen to you. So, if you want your clients to really listen to you- convey it in the most effective manner possible.