Lessons learned in Team Management

Kishore C.S (September 2000)

During past few years I have been managing teams as part of my job. The following are some of my experiences and lessons learned that I want to share with you.

What drives a team?

A sense of achievement is what drives a team. If a team is working towards a major goal the team would be highly energetic and enthusiastic.

Team leader plays a very crucial role in managing the team. Similar to a teacher’s role (earlier article Noble Profession), the team leader also plays a role model for the team. Providing leadership to the team is a major challenge and one needs to do it very carefully.

• Keeping the team motivated
• Ensure team delivers consistently
• Ensure team is focused
• Ensure the team is quality conscious and customer focused

One of the most important things a leader needs to do is understand individual as 'an Individual'. This challenge is more in the knowledge based industry and the lessons learned summarize my experience in this IT industry over past few years.

Lessons Learned in team management

• Interesting Work: It is not always the ‘money’ that matters, but ‘interesting work’ also matters. Leader should check with each team member about the work that he is doing is ‘interesting enough’ or not. What is 'interesting' for one may not be 'interesting' for another. Don't assume that what you assigned will be 'interesting enough' for the team member.
• Challenges: Every individual looks for challenges and an opportunity to perform. Understand clearly what challenges an individual wants to tackle and when an opportunity arises give him a chance. An opportunity to learn and excel would motivate a team member to a great extent.
• Emotions: It takes continuous monitoring of emotions of individual in group dynamics. Watch for change of expressions in team members during team meetings or whenever any interactions are happening. People tend to get upset about minor things which disturbs the overall emotional strength of the team. One should tackle such issues early enough so that they don't turn into disasters. Two members in a team not getting along because of a difference of opinion can damage the team motivation.
• Communication: Team communication matters a lot. Team needs to be informed well ahead of anything that effects the team. Simple things like transfer of a member in a team, splitting the team should be directly informed by the leader. Team always looks forward to the team leader to deliver the information.
• Goal: Each team consists of a mix of people. Create a common goal as the motivating factor for each so that the team works towards the same.
• Conscious Efforts: Team leader needs to spend more than 50% of his time and energy in doing the team management. It is not a work you do when you are free. It is a continuous effort day in, day out.
• Individual Attention: Treat each individual equally but at the same time give individual attention. This is easier said than done. Always be open in communication. Don't give a chance to team members that one person is a favorite and others are not.
• Uniqueness: Each individual is different and unique. Each one has different skill, attitude, strengths and weaknesses. It is not possible to draw similarities from one individual to another individual. Every one feels he is different and wants to be treated the same way. Treating individuals as non-entity is a biggest mistake one can do to de-motivate an individual.
• Solving Problems: Solve team members problems. Many times team members would be having minor problems in doing their job well, which they may or may not communicate. It is responsibility of the leader to keep checking with everyone about their problems and help them by providing necessary training, information.
• Confidence: Team leader needs to maintain a confident look and positive thinking. A negative thinking leader cannot motivate the team and would never be accepted by the team as a leader. No one would be willing to go a leader for solution to their problems when the leader himself has lot of problems.

• Read books and articles on Leadership
• Read books in the series of ‘one minute manager’
• Treat people management as most important thing in success of your team
• Enjoy people management
• Be self-motivated

People management is something that keeps giving new challenges and at no time you can relax that I am done with team management for a period. There is always scope for improvement and one needs to evolve individual style of managing people and be good at it.

Team Management is people management and Managing people is one of the toughest challenges anyone can face. It needs lot of self-discipline, self-management, effort and energy to do this. Like many things, one has to enjoy people management and do it with sincerity to be a good team leader.