When you are promoted as a lead and handed additional responsibility of managing people. At first, you may have mixed feelings about managing people, as it could be tough managing a team. However, you need to be confident and following these seven key tips will definitely help you take up your new role with ease.
Key Skills Required to Manage your Team
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Earn Respect and Build a Good Rapport:
Just because you have ‘X’ years of experience and some expertise in the technical domain does not entitle you to boss around. It will surely have a negative impact with your team members. So before playing a team lead, you need to earn the team’s respect. You need to show them that you are a problem solver, a leader, an efficient time manager and a person who could deliver at any given cost. Once they know who you are, they will respect what you say.
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Communication is Vital:
All relations are built on how you communicate and listen to others. Therefore, make sure you are clear in terms of communication: written or verbal. If you want, you could document and circulate the expectations of the whole team. For example, if there is a change in some file structure, a written communication by the team is expected or in case someone is planning to leave early, a verbal communication should be good enough. Conducting brainstorming sessions or feedback sessions could also help you set the expectations of the team. Being a boss does not mean you could interrupt your team when they are speaking. You also need to be an active listener, which is quite effective as a manager.
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Be Diplomatic yet Transparent:
You need to protect yourself and your team and still be politically correct and deliver as per your rules. An effective manager is the one who can get things done his way both from his team and his superiors. Therefore, it is important to judge a situation and react in a subtler way, rather than creating a high-pressure scenario and troubling the team as well as the stakeholders.
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Delegation is Important:
Delegation opens the door to two things: first you would have time to devote to people management and higher priority tasks and secondly you would be grooming another person in your team as a next manager. Therefore, start delegating some lower priority tasks, and once your team excels in those you could move to medium priority and then higher priority tasks.
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Motivate Your Team:
As a manager, the most important task for you is to keep the team motivated. It could be in the form of an appreciation mail or a sticky note on your team member’s table. Even a small treat of chocolates and some coffee could do the trick. For bigger events you could try sending a bouquet of flowers or announcing the great work done by the team member during lunch hours or a mail to superiors’ highlighting your team’s achievements.
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Do what you Expect from them:
Your team is more like a mirror image of you. Therefore, always do what you expect from them. For example, if you want them to come on time for a meeting, it would be great if you make sure to join all meetings on time. Or if you want your team to complete their task before the timeline, make sure you do the same.
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Be a Conflict Solving Guy:
Managers who could unravel problems with clarity and intelligence are considered to be extremely effective. Effective managers allow others to make recommendations and suggestions. Smart managers are masters at conflict management and are persuasive in addressing problems and getting others involved to find an immediate resolution.
A good manager is considered to be methodical in how they break down conflict into manageable pieces. They view a conflict as an opportunity to build new relationships and as a powerful learning moment to train their team to manage conflict for themselves.
Treading cautiously and vigilantly could make you one of the effective, smart and adorable managers for your team and also to your employer.
