Make Time To Manage Your Team

Bad managers can turn dream jobs into nightmares; good ones make even the toughest jobs worthwhile. So how do you become that kind of manager?

Build a brand
Managers manage a team, rather than a dozen individuals all pulling different ways. Teams work together, share skills to improve everyone else’s performance. So how do you build yours?

First of all, think of your team as a brand. You want your team, whatever it’s called (and if it hasn’t got a name, then give it one!) to be the best in your office. That’s how you succeed. For that to happen, your employees have to want the same thing – so get them interested in being the best.

Aim for the target
First of all, make sure your people know what’s expected of them. Your team will be required to hit a particular target, be it sales or tasks completed, so make sure your employees know what it is. Find a way to track your team’s overall progress against that target that also shows individual achievement, so that each employee can see how they’re contributing.

Reward success, whether it’s by taking your team to the pub after work, letting them finish half an hour early on a Friday or just handing out a few candy bars. You need your employees’ loyalty; earn it by showing you appreciate their hard work and making the team’s success theirs as well. When something goes wrong, treat it as a learning opportunity rather than cause to tear someone off a strip.

People Power
If you trust your people, they’ll work harder for you. Make sure your employees feel they can come to you with their problems; a lot of the time you’ll be able to nip an issue in the bud before it can develop into something worse.

Listen to your employees and note their individual skills and aspirations, then find a way to use them to help both you and them. You’re going to be busy as a manager, so if you can delegate work to your employees, you can make your own workload more manageable while giving them a chance to develop the skills they need to follow their career path.