Managing Teams Has Become a Top Priority

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Teams Have Become More Important Than Individuals

Volumes of “How to” books and articles have been authored advising people about managing individuals effectively. Most classic techniques and strategies appear in these publications with some newer ideas interspersed to make for interesting reading.

The long-prevailing idea that superior managers always combine some art with the best scientific theories continues without major disagreement. Each human displays a combination of measurable behavior patterns and some ingredient of uniqueness. Much of the art of managing can be learned, but its implementation depends on the personality, education, experience, and environment of the manager.

In recent years, teams have become a critical component of most contemporary company operations. When constructed and managed effectively, teams usually become more productive than the talent of their individual members, like an overachieving sports organization.

Consequently, teams, their design, and their management have moved to center stage in the world of business. While teams in the workplace have always existed, the explosion of technology in the past two decades has made them even more important. Creating valuable software, effective call centers, and professional, secure e-commerce operations require teams, large and small, to function as fine-tuned machines.

Team chemistry is a popular subject from the playing field to the boardroom. Advocates of the importance or relative unimportance of chemistry are typically evenly divided. Those who downplay team chemistry point to athletes and businesspersons who have performed well, regardless of their personal feelings for other team members. Others believe that strong team chemistry elevates everyone’s performance.

While motivating individual employees remains a necessary management component, creating, coaching, and supervising teams to high performance has become more important. Examine the following tips to help create superior teams, which will enhance your management image and accelerate your professional career.

How to Manage Teams Effectively

Managing teams effectively involves many individual supervisory components. However, four primary objectives stand out as most important. Mastering these tasks should ensure that you are managing successfully and your team will perform at a high level.

1.   Most of the proven methods of establishing yourself as a leader in all areas of business apply to the best team leaders. These qualities include offering consistent feedback, commending good work publicly, strongly supporting all team activities, asking for ideas and feedback, outlining the expected team behavior, and clearly stating goals and objectives. Your support and encouragement of the team typically returns their loyalty and dedication to their leader.
2. Create and implement reasonable and attainable goals.  Team goals must be meaningful, above all other considerations. Goal setting can, at times, become more important than the objectives themselves. Avoid this common trap. Meaningful goals will take some thoughtful time to create. They must make sense and provide benefit for the company, the group, and the individual team members.
3. Develop individual stars into superior team players.  This tip can be easy or difficult to install. Now is the time to use the human management techniques you’ve found or internalized. High performing individuals are sometimes reluctant to blend into a team. They become committed to working alone and believe their notable achievements result from this independence. Often managed competition (key word: managed) gives these individuals the excitement they crave to succeed and allows them to become valuable members of the team, too.
4. Foster an environment that encourages team learning.  This requires you to emphasize your understanding of the art of management. Learning environments are not usually created by data, numerics, or technology. Positive team environments are built through a combination of support, understanding, opportunity, and honesty. While learning obviously should be encouraged, you also need to make it challenging, interesting, and enjoyable. Often, if you strongly encourage professional bonding and exhort your group to behave like a team, the environment you want will develop.

Believe in the iconoclastic sports rule, “There is no ‘I’ in team.” Melding individual egos, large and small, into a high performing team, bringing out the best of the talent therein, and keeping all members interested and focused is a challenge. Since few managers have the opportunity to hand pick their players, learning to manage a high performing team will make you a more effective professional. Senior management will also be aware and impressed with your results.

Business teams are here to stay. Their importance to companies is not in dispute. Learn to lead teams successfully and increase your value to your employer.