ABCS of managing a team
If you are the manager or supervisor of a team and when you are struggling with a deadline or dealing with delicate decisions, the last thing you want to deal with is ‘people’. When the fight is really on and the battle is undecided, you want your team to act co-operatively, quickly, rationally, you do not want a disgruntled team member grousing about life, you do not want a team member who avoids work, you do not want your key technician being tired all day because his baby cries all night. But this is what happens, and as a manager, you have to deal with it. A few ‘people problems’ can be solved quickly, some are totally beyond your control and can only be contained; but you do have influence over many factors which affect your team members and so it is your responsibility to ensure that your influence is a positive one.
As the leader of a team, you have the authority to sanction, encourage or restrict most aspects of team members’ working day, and this places you in a position of power - and responsibility.
In this short article, we will study briefly what motivates team members. By understanding these facts, you can adapt yourself and the work environment, so that your team and the company are both enriched. Since human psychology is a vast and complex subject, we do not even pretend to explain it. Instead, I will outline a simple model of behaviour and a systematic approach to analyzing how you can exert your influence to help your team to work productively.
Motivation
As a manager, your most important task is motivating your team. You must understand what makes your people tick, how different they all are, and what you need to do to motivate each of them to peak performance.
Want more innovation?: If you want more innovation from your team, let them know that their employment is secure, even if their job changes. People worried about losing their jobs tend to find ways to stretch out the work, not innovative ways to do it better.
Always be a positive motivator: Your job as a leader is to get and keep your people motivated and working toward the common goal. Criticizing them, to their face or to others, erodes their motivation. So does dismissively telling them that their ideas “are stupid”. Watch your own actions to be sure you aren’t defeating your own efforts by demotivating your team.
Keep the flame alive: When people join your organization, they are all fired up and ready to do great things. Over time, they often wear down that enthusiasm. Instead, do what you can to fan the flames of their enthusiasm and you will be amazed at their outputs.
Listen to your team: It doesn’t make any sense to spend all that time and effort to find and hire the best people if you are just going to ignore their input.
People aren’t mushrooms: Mushrooms grow very well when kept in the dark and fed horse manure. People, on the other hand, function better when they are kept in the loop and given straight info.
Get your team involved: It’s a lot easier to get your team members to stand behind a company decision if they have the opportunity to participate in the discussion. The management still has to make the decisions but if they have had the opportunity to make their point of view known, employees are more apt to stand behind the ultimate decision, even if they don’t agree with it.
Achievement
As the manager, you set the targets and in selecting these targets, you have a dramatic effect upon your team’s sense of achievement. If you make them work too hard, the team will feel failure; if too easy, the team feels bored. Ideally, you should provide a series of targets which are easily achievable as stages towards the ultimate completion of the task. Thus, progress is punctuated and celebrated with small but marked achievements.
Recognition
Employee recognition is not just a nice thing to do for people. Employee recognition is a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your organisation.
When you consider employee recognition processes, you need to develop recognition that is equally powerful for both the organisation and the employee. You must address five important issues if you want the recognition you offer to be viewed as motivating and rewarding by your team members and important for the success of your organisation.
All team members must be eligible for the recognition
The recognition must supply the team members with specific information about what behaviors or actions are being rewarded and recognized
Anyone who then performs at the level or standard stated in the criteria receives the reward
The recognition should occur as close to the performance of the actions as possible, so the recognition reinforces behavior the employer wants to encourage
You don’t want to design a process in which managers ‘select’ the people to receive recognition. This type of process will be viewed forever as ‘favoritism’. This is why processes that single out an individual, such as ‘Employee of the Month’, are rarely effective
Advancement
There are two types of advancement: The long-term issues of promotion, salary rises, job prospects; and the short-term issues (which you control) of increased responsibility, the acquisition of new skills, broader experience. Your team members will be looking for the former, you have to provide the latter and convince them that these are necessary (and possibly sufficient) steps for the eventual advancement they seek. As a manager, you must design the work assignment so that each member of the team feels: “I’m learning, I’m getting on fine.”
Responsibility
What are managers responsible for? It sounds simple, but all too often most of them cannot give a comprehensive answer. Yes, managers are responsible for ‘getting stuff done’, but let’s break it down.
Managers are responsible for ensuring the following:
All team members are doing their jobs correctly, thoroughly, and on time 4Expectations and goals are clear 4Conflicting priorities are addressed and readjusted as needed
Objectives and goals are being met or exceeded
Key information is conveyed up the ladder, to the manager’s manager or others who might need to know
Team members are given a level of oversight appropriate to their position and abilities
Good employees feel appreciated, heard, and as if someone is ‘looking out’ for them
Team members are given regular feedback about their performance, including what they do well and where they need to improve, with special attention toward low performers to ensure they improve or are transitioned out
Team members are following company policies
There is a plan in place to ensure continuity if disaster were to trike (for instance, if a member of the team were to disappear tomorrow, is there a way for you to access passwords, important documents, and the other information someone would need to step in?) And, finally, and hugely important, managers are responsible for ensuring ‘results’ in their realms, concrete, measurable results.
Engaged team
On a larger scale, look carefully at the ‘systems’ which exist in your team, at those work practices which you and your team follow through sheer habit. Some of these can work against you, and the team. For instance, the way you hold team meetings may suppress contributions (at 4 o’clock on a Friday, say); the way you reward the exceptional may demotivate those responsible for the mundane.
Take a long-term view. Constant pressure will eventually destroy your team members. If you acknowledge that a relaxed yet engaged workforce is (say) 10% more efficient than one which is over-stressed and fretful, then you should realize that this amounts to half-a-day per week. So why not devote half-a-day to: Peer-group teaching, brainstorming on enhanced efficiency, visits to customers (internal and external), guest lectures on work tools, or all four on a four-weekly cycle. You lose nothing if you gain a skilled, committed, enthusiastic team.
Finally, look carefully at how you behave and whether the current situation is due to your previous inattention to the human factor: You might be the problem, and the solution.