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Team Management Skills
The Core Skills Needed to Manage Your Team
? iStockphoto mbbirdy
So you've just got a new job as a manager. Congratulations! Or maybe you've just been given the task of pulling a new team together. What a challenge!
Either way, whether your team exists already or it's your responsibility to create it, what do you do next?
This article looks at some of the key things that team managers need to do if their team is to thrive and succeed. These range from choosing the right
people and deciding who does what, to communicating with, developing and motivating people. It also covers some of the most common pitfalls to be avoided.
First Things First
But before that, some definitions are useful. What is management, exactly? And how does it differ from leadership?
A good starting point is the Warren G Bennis quote that \who do the right things; managers are people who do things right.\Leadership involves creating a compelling vision of the future,
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communicating that vision, and helping people understand and commit to it. Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for ensuring that the vision is implemented efficiently and successfully.
Of course, these two roles overlap – and, to be fully effective, you need to fulfill both roles. However, the focus of this article is on the specific skills and responsibilities of managers, and on the tools available to them. After all, there's no point energizing people to work towards a fabulous vision of the future, only to fall flat on your face when it comes to implementation.
The Importance of Delegation
The top priority for team managers is delegation . No matter how skilled you are, there's only so much that you can achieve working on your own. With a team behind you, you can achieve so much more: that's why it's so important that you delegate effectively!
Successful delegation starts with matching people and tasks, so you first need to explain what your team's role and goals are. A good way of doing this is to put together a team charter , which sets out the purpose of the team and how it will work. Not only does this help you get your team off to a great start, it can also be useful for bringing the team back on track if it's veering off course.
Only then will you be in a position to think about the skills, experience and competencies within your team, and start matching people to tasks. Read our article on task allocation for more on how to do this, and to find out how to deal with real-world challenges, such as managing the gaps between team members' skill sets.
Motivating Your Team
Another key duty you have as a manager is to motivate team members. Our article on Theory X and Theory Y explains two very different approaches to motivation, which depend on the fundamental assumptions that you make about the people who work for you. If you believe that they're intrinsically lazy, you believe in Theory X, while if you believe that most are happy and willing to work, you'll tend towards Theory Y. Make sure that you fully understand these theories – they will fundamentally affect your success in motivating people.
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You can find out much more about motivation with our quiz How Good Are Your Motivation Skills?
This helps you learn a number of core approaches to motivation – Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory , McClelland's Human Motivation Theory and Sirota's Three Factor Theory are particularly useful.
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Whatever approach you prefer to adopt, you also need to bear in mind that different people have different needs when it comes to motivation. Some individuals are highly self-motivated, while others will under-perform without managerial input. Use our article on Pygmalion Motivation to understand how to manage these different groups of people.
Developing Your Team
Teams are made up of individuals who have different outlooks and abilities, and are at different stages of their careers. Some may find that the tasks you've allocated to them are challenging, and they may need support. Others may be \
opportunities to stretch their skills. Either way, it's your responsibility to develop all of your people.
Your skills in this aspect of management will define your long-term success as a manager. If you can help team members to become better at what they do, you'll be a manager who people aspire to work for, and you'll make a great contribution to your organization, too.
The most effective way of developing your people is to ensure that you give regular feedback to members of your team. Many of us are nervous of giving feedback, especially when it has to be negative. However, if you give and receive feedback regularly, everyone's performance will improve.
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Beyond this, our article on Understanding Developmental Needs will help you develop individual team members, so that they can perform at their best.
Tip:
If you have to bring a substantial number of new people into your team, read our article on forming, storming, norming and performing to learn about the stages you can expect your team to go through. You can do a lot to help your people through this process!
Communicating and Working With Your Team – and With Others
Communication skills are essential for success in almost any role, but there are particular skills and techniques that you'll use more as a manager than you did as a regular worker. These fall under two headings: communicating with team members, and communicating with people outside your team. We'll look at each in turn.
Communicating With People in Your Team
As a team manager, you're 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's well worth mastering the skill of running effective meetings .
Many meetings include brainstorming sessions. As a team manager, you'll often have to facilitate these, so you'll need to be comfortable with doing this. There's more to this than simply coming up with creative ideas, as you do when you're just a regular participant in such a session: read our article to find out how to run brainstorming sessions. Make sure that you understand where they can go wrong, and what you can do to avoid this. Active listening is another important skill for managers – and others – to master. When you're in charge, it can be easy to think that you know what others are going to say, or that listening is less important, because you've thought of a solution anyway.