Leading Team

It is not enough as a leader to articulate your group's objectives once and assume everyone is on board. Refer to the established goals throughout your project and use them to frame accomplishments and interactions.

A coach pushes people. If you are not asking people to do something they have not done before, you are not setting the bar high enough.

A coach also supports. When someone is not finding their way or is not succeeding, you help them. In either case, ample use of the word "we" is often helpful.

I like people I lead to know that there is plenty of opportunity for input. I do not have all of the answers. I want others to be exploring and suggesting new things and I often seek out review and input from team members I respect.

But there are also moments when a decision must be made and people need to have clear direction. You can not be afraid of making the unpopular decision so much that you do not make a decision at all.

This is often said, but that does not make it any less critical. Of course every leader wants to stack their team with "A" players. You either have some of these or you need to find some. But you also can not expect to only work with "A" players otherwise, your leadership would not be needed.

When you move from being a worker to a line manager, you need to develop a new set of skills, and make use of new tools and techniques. These will help you with the key management activities of organizing, motivating, developing and communicating with your team.

However much you hope that you will not have to do it, there comes a time in most manager's careers when they have to discipline an employee. Discipline may be subtly different from basic feedback, because it does not always relate specifically to the employee's work. You can give feedback on their phone manner, for example, but handling problems with timekeeping or personal grooming can need a different approach.

Here are a few keys for leading a team:

☛ Establish the team objectives

☛ Get the right people on and off

☛ Demonstrate your commitment

☛ Be a coach

☛ Make decisions

Here are some team leading skills:

☛ The Importance of Delegation

☛ Motivating Your Team

☛ Developing Your Team

☛ Communicating and Working With Your Team

☛ Managing Discipline

As a team manager, you are likely to be chairing regular sessions as well as one-off meetings. Meeting of all kinds, and regular ones in particular, are notorious for wasting people's time, so it is well worth mastering the skill of running effective meetings.

Many meetings include brainstorming sessions. As a team manager, you will often have to facilitate these, so you will need to be comfortable with doing this. There is more to this than simply coming up with creative ideas, as you do when you are just a regular participant in such a session.