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Are You Leveraging The Potential of Your Teams When Managing?
Does this sound like a familiar scenario?
You do good work, get the professional qualification that’s relevant in your field and before you know it you’re told you are getting promoted and have to manage a team.
Like most professionals you’re probably great in your field.
But managing might be a little different.
In fact what I’ve noticed over the years that some of the best people technically often find managing a bit of a struggle.
One of the biggest mistakes that they often make is falling into the lone ranger trap.
By that I mean they think they can do everything personally.
Sadly this is never the case.
For starters you have one big constraint.
The amount of time you have. It’s capped at 168 hours each week and no matter who you are you cannot buy an upgrade.
The smart managers get this and start to leverage the potential of their teams.
The less smart try to do it all by themselves and end up under delivering or burning out.
So how do you leverage the potential of teams?
Get the right people on the team
The real strength of teams is the diversity of skills, qualities, knowledge and experience.
Sadly when it comes to hiring people for a team there appears to be a bias to recruiting people just lack you when what you really want is people who complement what already exists.
Get to really understand where people do their best work
The more time people on what they do best you will without doubt get better performance overall.
Sometimes this doesn’t happen because managers just don’t make the time to really understand what each team member does exceptionally well.
Create the right conditions
Key to successful team working is a willingness to collaborate rather than compete.
The way you review and reward performance is a factor.
As is the tone and expectations you set around behaviours, communicate, challenge and reach decisions.
In truth your team is really key to your success. So what action are you going to take to leverage the potential of your teams?
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.