Are You A Good Manager or a Good Leader?
As a manager of any position, you will need certain level of leadership attributes.
The leader can move the team towards greater success through regular and consistent communication, sharing and most importantly lead by example.
In order for the manager to be proven, in my opinion, few things to note.
1. Listen To Your Team Members
Understand the team members difficulties. Hear what is bothering them. What kind of issues are they facing when they are accomplishing the tasks. If they are not able to fulfill your delegated task, your assignment is incomplete too.
Some team members just want to voice out their grievances. The leader just lend his ears, listen to their thoughts. Sometimes, you don’t even have to do anything. This may indirectly motivate and maximize team performance. The team member might feel that the leader is listening to them.
Team members’ opinion are to be valued as they are the ones that faced the issues and they are the so called subject matter expert (SME). A manager is not effective if you bulldoze your way when better suggestions are proposed.
2. Treat All Team Members Fairly
As a manager, do not be bias. Just because you are closer to one of your team member and you could give him/ her the best and easy task. Instead you should give attention to all your team member, the bigger the team, the more attention and fairer you should be.
If you are those that worked in a high attrition rate organizations, you have to develop the team members loyalty. Treat them fairly by delegating a fair share of joy and difficult task. In a way, you are building a team as a whole. You are also cross training every team member.
3. Develop And Grow Your Team Members
Appreciate and give praises to team member in public. If they are not doing things correctly, reprimand in private. The bigger the team, the more you have to develop the members.
Everyone loves to be appreciated. From experience, team member will be even hardworking and contribute much more when their effort is being recognized.
Develop the team competency will shorten the learning curve in handling a task. Grow the team hard skill such as certification like I.T. Not forgetting the team’s soft skill, such as presentation skill, communication skill and so forth.
Informal team building, could foster a better relationship. Activities such as a gathering, drinking session after work, a game of football, basketball could bring the team closer and have a better working relationship.
Leading and Managing Team is never an one time event – It is for every day, 365 days a year. ”Once a Leader, Always a Leader”. It has remained a challenging but fulfilling task for Department Heads and Managers when done successfully.
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