The first and noteworthy trait that forms a high leader is to identify powers and passions of each team member, encouraging particular trajectories. A leader never blame or correct someone publicly, he/she has diplomacy and talks in particular. A same mistake again? The leader won’t give all the answers, but will let the team search until learn and, after learning – you’ll see – the team overcomes. Leading teams, specially a big one, goes beyond these basic advices, and requires:
1. Goals and Empowerment
Find the balance between aggressive and realistic goals. The impracticable ones, instead of exciting, dishearten and may deplete employees when it’s not even required. Sensible goals, with deadlines and priorities, inspire the team to organize in order to fulfill them.
The awakening of a simple people group that leads to the emergence of a satisfied team, with empathy between fellows, starts on the awareness of the company values. You should know what drives you, in addition to financial benefits. Naming team roles with good titles, like “jr” or “analist” denotes that all are expected to perform at a high level. This is about being treated like adults who can manage with confidence and competence.
2. Flexibility sometimes
Trust your employees and let them know it. A little time out of the office, somewhere just to relax for two days, twice a year, to all the team, may truly increase friendship and create an ambience trust-based, full of shared experiences. The time spent cooking and walking together between meals is as important as our time focused on clarifying strategies. Other grand benefits may be extend holidays and authorize home-office. While it seems like a huge amount of time away from work, it is an investment in the backbone of the team. Since the team works hard, it also deserves a generous vacancy policy.
3. Communication and Gratitude
The idea that performance reviews only happen once a year as a talent development tool is outdated. Learning is about repetition, practice and course-correcting as you go. Without feedback, it is impossible for anyone to become better. It’s hard to take the time to give a regular feedback in the ratio of 5:1 positive to negative feedback (the “magic ratio”), but the reward is that people will grow faster than you think is possible. And they will start trusting you more since you are supportive and focused on how they can improve and develop.
Exercise
Do you know your leadership style? Learn and take the best of your team.
- Do you lead your teams or manage people individually? What works best?
- Have you felt the differences of being in a “real team” vs a work group? What are they?
- How can you create a compelling sense of purpose in your team?
Big groups are not a problem at all on Runrun.it, the first software to manage people, tasks and time. Find out the talents of your team, list every task with priorities and deadlines. Test it for free: http://runrun.it
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