Team Success Equals Management Success

Want to add to your success as a manager?….create ongoing team success!

One of the key competencies to management success is the ability to manage not only individuals, but the collective team. Some call it “team work management.” Other descriptions include team performance management or team work management. No matter what you call it…the bottom line is it does impact a company’s bottom line! Team success equals a company success.

I like the phrase, “team work management,” which I saw in an article on this topic. A link to the complete article is included at the end of this post.

For this post, I wanted to draw attention to it’s definition and some of the components mentioned in the article that are necessary for successful team performance management.

Please note – this is a skill!!…and an absolutely necessary skill to be a competent and complete manager.

Team management is in essence the optimization of manpower to attain results. Individuals with complimentary skills together form teams, which (hopefully in synergy) strive to attain specific results. Though the priorities might be different for different business entities the end result of team management would always be to increase the profitability of the organization.

I’m going to share the 4 core components included in the article and add comments.  Here they are:

1.  Clarity of vision – I call this going from “me to we.”  Each team member has a conscious and unconscious agenda that drives how they behave within the group and how they prioritize their work.  I have a cool “team building in a box” exercise in my workshops that helps team members make the critical shift from me to we.  This is one of the positive elements of group think.

2.  Selecting the right personnel – Better, targeted hiring is essential to a productive team. To do so,  are you clear on what qualities and skills are necessary for the success of each role within the team, which then directly impacts the success of the team?

This philosophy by the way is a management best practice and is researched and discussed in the book “Good to Great.”  This book is a must read for every management professional.  Don’t have it in your library? – you can get it here: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

3. Holistic approach – see the team in the context of the entire company and how it is specifically contributing to key company objectives. The article terms it this way, “drive the various departments as a single unit. There will be scores of departments in organizations and to attain their proposed objectives these units need to work in tandem by overlooking the boundaries to ensure better coordination and results.” This of course requires great collaboration between the leaders of these departments.

4.Team accountability – as a compliment to touching base one-on-one with individual members, creating ongoing  team and public accountability in the context of team goal setting and reporting meetings is the bow that wraps all the other components together and supercharges productivity.

A key reason for why effective team management needs to be apart of every managers capabilities portfolio can be found in this 2 minute lesson from Management-in-Minutes – entitled “Team Management – The Power of the Group,” which you can  access here.

Finally, obviously this post does not exhaust the topic, but serves as a great springboard for personal assessment and an initial checklist.

Coaching Tip: Where are you at with your knowledge in this area and what practices do you have in place that supports these productivity components?

Also, you may want to have someone come in and springboard your team synergy with some team facilitation.  I am happy to do that as well. Feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss – joann@joanncorley.com

Here is the link to the full article from which this post was sourced.
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The Cruelty of Manangement Training via Public Seminars

I’m sure in reading this title, some of you may be thinking…wow, that’s a bit harsh! Well, so be it if it communicates a critical point that will help others.

I was conducting a management training seminar last week in the Carolinas that dealt with unacceptable employee behavior. I had the opportunity to have a sidebar chat with one of the attendees regarding her unique challenges.

As she shared her story, such a sadness came over me as I realized that it would be very challenging for her to successfully implement what she was learning that day; in fact what her company had paid for her to learn.

Why?…upper level management and the company culture was not in place (at least from what she had observed) to support and encourage the change. In fact it was quite the opposite. In her view, there was NO support for addressing the challenges and you could see the discouragement on her face. Part of her question to me was what could she do about the piece. You could see her desire to make a difference …to constructively address the problem. Yet I could see how tough it was going to be.

My question…why do companies send employees to trainings such as public seminars, when there is not the management support back at the office to implement what’s being learned. To me…that is cruel!…and very sad.

Even sadder?… many decision makers are not aware of the disconnect and the waste of money to them in not having the atmosphere in place to successfully leverage what they are paying for their employees to learn AND how hurtful, frustrating, and discouraging it is to the employee.

Back to the attendee…I encouraged her to have courage, to entertain the possibility she might have to set the example with her new found knowledge and be the leader in this context…leading by example and hopefully results. Positive outcomes…results speaks volumes!

Here’s a plea from someone who conducts public seminars, management trainings and teaches updated management concepts: for those of you who are responsible for training budgets and/or sending your staff to trainings (public seminars and workshops), please ask yourself this question, “What’s in place back at the office to help support the implementation of what my team members will be learning, so that the cost of the seminar will not go to waste…..AND they will not be discouraged from learning, growing and leading?”

And…question #2 – what are the intended messages that are being communicated to an employee when the support is not in place?