Managing your team for success

Whether you are a business owner, director or manager it is likely that you will have a team of people to manage at work. Managing a team of people can be very challenging with lots of individuals making up the team all with their own personalities, preferences, skills sets and opinions.

So what are the key elements that you can focus on when managing your team to give you the best chance of success?

Have a clear team strategy, vision and plan. A great starting point for team success is a clear team strategy, vision and plan that aligns with the overall business strategy, vision and plan. What are your team strategy, vision and plan?

Communicate well. Team success is underpinned by excellent communication. Consider how and when you communicate with your team, both on an individual and team level, as well as the communication between your team members. This may be a combination of regular team and individual meetings. Some of the key communication skills for a manager are clarity of communication, open questions, active listening and encouraging feedback. How is communication in your team?

Recognise that everyone is different. A team is made up of individuals so getting to know each person on your team and recognising each of your team members as an individual, as well as part of the team, will pay dividends in team performance. Do you know each member of your team?

Have clear roles and responsibilities. Another critical element of team success is clarity of roles and responsibilities both individually and for the team as a whole. This is an area that is often overlooked by managers creating big issues at a later point. Are your team all clear on their roles and responsibilities?

Encourage learning and delegate. Nurture your team members to maximise their potential by encouraging learning and development and delegating work to them, whether this be through courses, internal training or support to take on new responsibilities. What learning and development plans do you have for your team?

Proactively manage your team. Being proactive means taking full responsibility for your management role, being forward looking, actively managing your team, leading by example and aiming for continuous improvement. How are you managing your team?

Be consistent. Another key element for success is being consistent as a manager with your team. Are you consistent with your team or are you forever changing your mind and giving different team members inconsistent messages?

Trust your team. Trust helps you work efficiently together, achieve mutual goals, gives your staff a feeling of belonging and maximises your chance of success as a team. It is very hard to foster and maintain trust in a team environment so it will take hard work and effort. How is the trust in your team?

Make time for your team. Great managers make time for their team and are there to support, motivate and encourage the individual team members. Are you making time for your team?

Think about how you would like to be managed. Who have you been managed by before? How did they manage you? How would you like to be managed? Consider modelling the good management behaviours of others when you are managing your team.

Celebrate what has gone well & learn from what has not got well. Encourage a culture of celebrating what has gone well within your team and using things that have not gone so well as learning. What is your approach when things go well or not so well?

Hopefully this article has got you thinking about how you are managing your team and what you could change for the better.

Author: Liz Makin
Published: June 2018

Makin It Happen has a range of personal development online courses to purchase, created by Liz Makin, including anxiety management, communication, resilience, soft skills, stress management, time management and coaching. Liz Makin also provides personalised business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services to business owners, directors, managers and professionals.

Please email Liz@makinithappen.co.uk to arrange a FREE consultation session to discuss our business coaching, business mentoring and stress management services for business owners, directors, managers and professionals.