Team Management, you and your people

Does successful team management seem like a bit of a mystery to you? You put together a team made up of the best and brightest, with the right skills to complement each other and who will deliver for your business but are you seeing results?

Does your team organically develop, and are you seeing the key skills in your team coming together as a whole? If you sit back and hope for the best, probably not. So what’s the answer?

It’s not them, it’s you!

A highly talented and competent team requires the same in its leadership. But what are those key team management skills, and how can you develop them?

4 key things you absolutely need to know about team management

We’re going to focus on four key areas to help you get started with the development of your team management skills. We’re not going to look at specific skills, but rather some of the key things that you can work on to help you identify and develop your skillset.

Invite feedback from your team

The only way that you’re going to understand how your leadership skills are understood by the people you lead is to ask them. Simple right? You might find that there is nervousness among your team members to respond, so how you pitch this will define how people react. 

And you need to accept that not everyone will like your style. And to be blunt, if you’re a poor leader, you must accept the results of your request. If everyone in your business thinks that you’re amazing you should take that with a pinch of salt too. Ask yourself why people would be unwilling to be honest. Because let’s face it, no one is perfect.

We talked earlier about the level of talent in your team. If you have hired skilled people, they should understand your need for self-improvement, and be honest with you about your own leadership skills. 

Goal setting for improvement and development

Armed with the information from your team, you can take a look at yourself and where you think that you can improve. Now it’s time to do something about your skills gaps, hone what you have, and most importantly, consider what you need to do to improve.

But your work isn’t done there. It’s important to set yourself goals that will help you to keep focused on the skills that you need to improve, and continually develop your skillset. SMART goals will hold you to account and keep you organised in a busy world.

Professional Development

One of your goals is likely to be professional development. Are you a member of a professional organisation? You could take advantage of the continued professional development (CPD) available. But be sure that the organisation that you are a member of is the best one to meet your goals. 

We looked at goals earlier, so you should know what it is that you want to achieve and can seek out the membership that suits you.

You could consider a third party trainer to support your development. Do you have other people in your business who could benefit from improving their leadership skills too? You could put in place a leadership training programme for key people.

There are some great resources from Harvard Business School here 

Practising your skills

Of course, as you learn new skills it’s important to integrate them into your everyday activity. But don’t be tempted to start with every new skill that you may have learnt. You could overwhelm yourself and your team with such an abrupt change in behaviour. Consider what is going to have the greatest impact, and where in your behaviour you’re most comfortable making initial changes.

Why not speak to your team as well and share your personal goals? They may be able to help you with ongoing feedback so that you can measure your own results from the perspective of the people you are leading.

Where Identity Resource can help with Team Management Skills

We’ve looked at four key areas where you can improve your leadership skills. There are other areas to look at too including emotional intelligence, communications skills, organisation and ability to delegate. 

We looked at some of these skills in our blog #4 Key Leadership Skills your Business Can’t do without

Our team at Identity Resource delivers group and 1-2-1 coaching and training in teams and for business leaders, so contact us to find out how we can work together to work on your specific leadership development requirements. 

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