Improving Team Management
9 July 2015
Read by 3351 persons
1- Develop your adaptability
When managing teams, you need to be able to accept playing different roles and switch between different management styles, whether directive, participatory, relational or delegative. You need to be directive when necessary, play on emotions in other cases and always adapt to the context. For example, imagine an accident in a department. The employees, worried, identify with the victim. You must first express your compassion and then, secondly, provide solutions. Another scenario: if you have to announce a difficult decision, such as a change in organization, you must accept that employees express their feelings and let them express themselves.
2-Assume your intermediary role
It is also important to clearly define your position as a leader/manager, in other words, to assume the fact of being in solidarity with both the company's decisions and your team. However, if the two are contradictory, you must create spaces for confrontation, so that your team feels heard and then play an intermediary role between the two positions. To successfully carry out this mission, it is important to communicate well by selecting the information you will transmit to your team on the one hand and by thinking about how you will present things to them on the other hand so as not to be caught off guard.
3- Know how to correct your employees
A member of your team is on the wrong track? Show moderation. You shouldn't tell them too bluntly, nor be too gentle. If they get the feeling that you're going to have a negative opinion, they'll think they're bad. Feeling negatively judged, they will say "it's not me", like a child, and enter into a justification process. However, the objective is to make them admit their mistake in order to find a solution. To do this, you must start by making them acknowledge the facts, then ask them, very calmly: "What do you suggest so that this doesn't happen again?" In this way, you force your interlocutor to understand and find solutions but without upsetting them.
Conversely, it is essential to practice positive reinforcement. When an employee has done something satisfactory, you must tell them. People need to verify the quality of their work.
4- Motivate your troops
When you have to set a new objective for your teams, it is essential that you know how to make them want to achieve it. To do this, you must refine your vision of the objective and want to believe in it yourself, in order to be in the energy and conviction. It is therefore a matter of being able to rely on factual elements - diagnosis and projections - and of knowing how to transmit the desire, the emotion and the pleasure of sharing an adventure. And to reassure your teams, it is finally recommended to explain very calmly the method you plan to follow and the intermediate steps of this new project.
5- Empower your teams
Delegation of responsibility is a must. This boils down to the following question: "How do I know if I can trust them?" However, to answer this question, it is also important to be able to answer these questions: "Do I accept that they do it differently from me? If they make a mistake, will I start all over again or try to learn from it? Will I be in solidarity with the consequences? Available to help them and promote their success?" The answer is important to be able to delegate without worry and allow your employees to work autonomously.
In short, each new situation a manager faces leads them to learn to adapt and improve. That being said, there is one constant that will always allow them to succeed: listening. Listening to your employees to better involve them in management decisions but also to support them in the best possible way. Listening to yourself, to convey a positive message, to anticipate difficulties and find appropriate solutions.
Philippe Montant General Manager ExeKutive.biz
