7 Effective Team Management Strategies That Deliver Results

Often new leaders feel daunted about how to begin enhancing team success. In fact, even seasoned leaders often feel confused about exactly what they should be doing. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery.

Developing the Characteristics of a Good Manager

Effective team management starts at the top. Here are some tactics for cultivating it.

• Craft a dynamic leadership style. A dynamic leader inspires people to want to do their best. They share a vision that energizes employees and rallies the team to action. 
• Motivate employees to excel. Help people believe in themselves and their ability to influence outcomes. When they connect personally to your vision and believe in their own strengths, they’ll be unstoppable.
• Learn the art of conflict resolution. Showing empathy and understanding in challenging situations will let you ease tension and adeptly solve problems.
• Practice active listening. Go into a conversation thinking about what you want to learn from the other person, not just what you want to say.
• Engage in informed decision-making. Leverage the best available data and analytics using today’s wide array of sophisticated tools for talent management and business planning.

You’ll become increasingly more effective as a manager as you hone these abilities.

Using Strong Communication Techniques to Motivate Employees

Become an outstanding communicator to increase your effectiveness in these ways:

• Open channels of communication. Let people know how to best reach you or schedule a conversation. Set up clear ways for team members to communicate with one another, too, like a virtual platform with messaging options.
• Use clear and concise language. Steer clear of complicated jargon whenever possible. You’ll be more eloquent when you focus on getting to the point rather than impressing people with your complex vocabulary. 
• Encourage feedback. Normalize the practice of giving feedback by asking for it yourself. Share good examples of feedback that people have given you. Model how to give feedback in a caring, direct way, but assure them that they don’t have to do it perfectly.
  
• Assess and adjust to individual team members’ needs. Is someone feeling daunted by group brainstorms? Create a method of asynchronous brainstorming to complement real-time sessions.

Through these techniques, you’ll make yourself understood and support your direct reports’ needs.

Empowering and Developing Team Members

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Giving people support tailored to their needs will help them reach the next level. Focus on these four priority areas to do that.

• Delegate and build trust. Challenge people to stretch their skills by taking on new types of assignments. Provide guidance as they get their feet wet, but trust them to carry out the work.
• Identify and nurture individual abilities. Talk with people about their greatest strengths. Consider how to leverage and further strengthen these areas, creating an individual development plan.
• Utilize tools and techniques for fostering collaboration. You can use tools like workflow management software, video conferencing solutions, and a digital calendar to collaborate successfully.
• Recognize achievements. Share right-sized recognition for efforts as well as achievements. If a team member has made a major accomplishment, allow time for others to share appreciation, too.

By taking these steps, you’ll make great strides in empowering employees to succeed.

Delivering Regular Performance Evaluations and Feedback

Give plenty of both constructive criticism and praise—ideally, multiple times a week. Younger employees may crave daily feedback, so cater to their needs. With abundant feedback, there will be no surprises in formal performance evaluations.

Conduct both individual and team performance reviews, too. Group reviews help teams understand how to improve as a unit. Make all performance reviews a dialogue, sharing your observations and listening to theirs.

Trusting Your Employees

Building trust increases employee loyalty and confidence. In fact, companies that are trusted by employees outperform others by 400%, so put these trust-building strategies to use:

• Offer flexibility. Allowing for flexible working arrangements shows you believe the employee is giving their all, even when you can’t see them.
• Be vulnerable. Share a tough experience you’ve had, which shows you trust them to empathize and encourages them to open up in turn.
• Be honest, transparent, and accountable. When you make a mistake, admit it. Keep them informed about the company’s plans and how they could be affected.

For example, Cisco Systems, known as one of the top places to work, trusts employees to take time off when needed. Management is viewed as highly ethical, and team members care about one another’s wellbeing.

Implementing Time-Management Strategies

Help employees boost productivity by prioritizing goals and tasks, then setting deadlines. Hold weekly meetings to discuss progress. Voicing goals to another person and setting regular appointments to discuss them increases the likelihood of achieving them by 95%. 

Encourage work-life balance. Talk with employees about how to strengthen this balance. For example, a frazzled employee might focus on completing the most pressing task before finishing others.

Use project planning best practices. Outline the project lifecycle and key stages. Create checklists of what needs to happen during every stage, along with who will handle it.

Encouraging Continuous Learning and Development

Continuous learning can be a significant employee benefit, as they want to work for a company that will nurture their growth. So, support their sustained development.

Provide ongoing training opportunities so growth will never stop. Ignite a culture of learning and growing by sharing your own enthusiasm for gaining new knowledge. Offer tools and resources that fit each employee’s level and role. You might group them into “learning clusters” to discuss the knowledge they’re building.

IN CONCLUSION:

By using these strategies, you’ll cultivate a driven and capable team that believes in its ability to get things done. Each person will have the support they need, and they’ll feel like a united front as a team. As a result, they’ll achieve more ambitious goals and strive to reach even higher!