Five important keys to effective team management to increase your team’s productivity and help you become a better manager
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Have you ever been frustrated about your team not doing what you wanted? Have you ever been annoyed with what’s happening, or not happening, in your business?
The words of the late Jim Rohn – American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker – ‘never wish your life were easier, wish that you were better,’ very much apply when it comes to managing your team. Often managers focus on their team – ‘they’re not doing this,’ or ‘they’re not doing that,’ – rather than asking themselves how they can be better managers.
If we start to work on becoming a better manager, we naturally get a more productive and effective team. So, what are the keys to being a great manager?
1. Daily lists
Give your team daily lists – daily so they know exactly what they need to do when they show up each day. Then they won’t just do what comes up and react to the day, they’ll know what outcomes need to happen each day in the business. Tie this in with a daily huddle – meet as a team to review key actions and outcomes – and it’s even more effective. If something’s off course, you only let it slide a day rather than it taking in weeks, months or even years to be addressed.
2. Weekly work-in-progress meetings
Get your key departments together. Often one department is doing one thing here and another one’s doing something else there, and no one’s actually talking about what’s going on. I remember working with a commercial interior fit-out company: there were the guys on site, the guys in sales and the guys in production, and they were not meeting regularly. They were just reactive, ‘we need this job done…,’ or ‘that thing is happening…’ and they were fighting fires all the time, just fixing jobs up. We put in place a system in which the right people met each week, so the department heads got together to discuss the priorities and up-coming jobs for the week, what was on course what wasn’t, and things got done because the whole business was managed a whole lot better.
3. Weekly one-on-one meetings
Meet with key team members within the business for about half an hour every week. As your business grows, you’ll have other people meeting with those team members but you as the business owner should be meeting with your key reports every single week to review performance. One client I was working with had an under-performing salesperson: I asked, ‘how often are you meeting with him?’ and the answer was, ‘we’re not.’ We put a few key indicators in each week to review with the salesperson and his performance improved immediately. Now he knew what he was meant to be focusing on. One-on-one appointments enable you to give feedback to team members on where they’re doing well and, if necessary, where they’re not doing so well.
4. Training plans
Everyone individual in your team should have a training plan, and you should have a budget for each plan. How much will you invest in each team member to grow them so they become better at their role? Often, it’s frustrating that they’re not performing as well as they could. But how much money and time have you put into training them so they become great at what they do? Sit down with each team member and work out a training plan for the next six months that enables them to be more effective and productive as an employee.
5. Walk around your business
Walk around your business at least twice a day to get a feel for what’s going on, talk to people and ask what’s working and what’s not. Too often, managers sit in their office and try to work out what’s going on from there. Go and find out what’s actually happening on the floor.
Focus on at least one of these areas and start in it straight away – go with the one that will have the biggest impact – and you’ll have taken the first step to becoming a better manager.
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