How do you know if you are an effective manager or team leader? If you have a team that is performing well, achieving goals, and doing so when you are not there then you are an effective team leader.
I hear people say all the time, "He is a good manager because he gets down and does everything that needs to be done." Or some say, "He is the hardest worker." While those are good habits they are not the most important.
If you own a small business and want to grow you need a team. The team could be employees who are paid a salary or independent contractors. Regardless, you are responsible for the performance of your team. You have a team because you can not do everything yourself and you want to grow your business and increase sales. That means that you must delegate with confidence. Your team is the extension of your brand.
If you have ever taken a management course you learned about the five functions of management. Here is a refresher.
Planning involves establishing and planning the goals of your team. You establish the goals of your business and your brand. You establish the vision, values and align goals and objectives. All of these must be communicated to everyone.
When you Organize you put the processes in place so that you and your team can serve your customers. You develop an internal infrastructure which includes standardized policies and procedures that makes business operation run smoothly.
Staffing involves selecting the right people for your team or your business. It does not matter whether they are paid employees or agents because everyone carries your brand. Skills and ability are important, however, you must be certain that you select a person that shares your organization’s values and culture. Unfortunately, I know a few brokers that love to talk about the size of their team. They fail to recognize quality and values.
Motivating your team is arguably the most important function of management since management involves getting results with others. Since you are ultimately responsible you will only be successful if your team succeeds. Engaged teams have engaged leaders. Your job as a manager or leader is to inspire and motivate your team toward the successful achievement of goals.
Finally, a manager measures and evaluates what goes on and the results produced. Measurement, evaluation, and feedback are continuous processes. You need to take corrective actions when things go off course. That might involve changing processes and procedures, readjusting goals and timetables or working with your team to resolve performance and motivation issues. Retraining some on your team or having more feedback meetings might be necessaryh.
There are really different sets of skills needed when managing a team. A Manager does not become competent by knowing all the individual jobs of the team. If you are new at this put a plan together which utilizes the above five functions of management. Read a similar post on this topic on our website.
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