As your team begins to work together, you need to establish a way each team member can exchange ideas and build mutual trust. Successful groups are built on trust and collaboration. A free exchange of ideas, in an open environment, will allow your team to get to know each other and enable you to check on how they work together. Learn some tips to help build team trust and establish personal bonds.
Setting up a series of informal meetings, early on in your project, offers an ideal opportunity for team member exploration. Like other teams, your people will also most likely progress through several predictable stages of team formation and help them bond with each other, as they move from being strangers to form a cohesive team. Use this time to discuss your project, delegate particular tasks, set individual roles, and discuss objectives. Always make sure that everyone involved understands every stage of their involvement.
Use the following six-step approach to cultivate an environment of trust within your team:
Employees will never work to their full potential if they don't feel trusted by management. Trust the intentions of your people to do the right thing. Employees who do feel trusted are higher performers and exert extra effort, going above and beyond role expectations. Trust they want to make the right decision, and make choices that, to the best of their understanding are the best and, still might work. Trusted employees feel more valued, which will help to make them feel more engaged in their work.
Reward desired behavior by letting your team know that they will be rewarded for a job well done and supported if they run into difficulties. Make sure your team feels valued. Interact frequently and give yourself opportunities to let your team know a job is being done well. Or they will be supported and guided to do the course correct if necessary. With positive reinforcement, you add a positive reward when a person is showing desired behavior. As a team member ensure to be trustworthy and establish your credibility. Be reliable. Always try to accomplish what you say, do it on time, and without any excuses.
Generally, we all start our careers being a member of a work team, and gradually may find ourselves in a team leader role, at some point in our career. Learn from mistakes and let people learn from their mistakes. Establish a culture where people who take action and make a mistake will be viewed positively in your empowered organization. Punished learners do not learn the new skill; instead, they learn to avoid the person who punished them by taking fewer risks. Mistakes help people learn to become empowered
Most of the organizations today we work for have certainly changed from the previous traditional ways of working (such as hierarchical based organizations or functionally driven organizations) to matrix-based organizations where the relevance of team-based approaches have gained even more importance. The biggest challenge that leaders face while working with such structures is, how do they as team leaders ensure the empowerment of employees and start sharing their leadership responsibilities with the team members to maximize creativity and productivity. Delegation and trusting someone to do a job are also empowered. Demonstrate trust in others so there is a foundation for them to trust you. Always remember trust goes both ways.
Once you have empowered people hold others accountable and set the expectations as early as possible. Demonstrate accountability in all your actions. Remember there is no true glory without accountability. Take the opportunity to clarify the behaviors expected of each team member. Use your Team Charter to build an understanding of team objectives. Each person should clearly understand the goals of the group and should know how these fit with your organization's overall objectives. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) linking your team's tasks to your organization's goal and objectives and use these indicators to start managing performance. Team members should be clear about the definitions of these KPIs and must understand how they affect them directly so that they understand their deliverables and how they will be measured. Provide all the needed materials and equipment to do the job effectively.
One of the most important roles that you have as a team manager is that of keeping individuals motivated and energized to keep working for organizational goals. Regular feedback helps employees efficiently direct their attention and energies, helps them avoid major errors and dead ends, and keeps them from learning things they later will have to unlearn at great cost. Try to tailor your efforts based on the different needs of each individual (refer to the Situational Leadership Model). Building effective teams is a continuous process – keep revisiting each step of this process on a regular basis.
Develop your Leadership Skills
There are a number of broad skill areas that are particularly important for leaders. Today's demanding global business landscape is defined by relentless change and rising business complexity, bringing new challenges. Leadership skills provide career-enhancing resources and support you to be exceptionally successful in your career. Leaders need to provide direction to their teams and need to be able to make good and timely decisions to define and support strategic direction for the enterprise.
Improving Skills & Competencies
Whenever you are looking for a job or having your yearend discussion with your manager, two terms generally referred to be “Skills” and “competencies”. Today success in a career is an outcome of having essential competencies and building required skills. Skills could be a major distinguishing factor for you to move up on the career ladder and jump from one role to another. Leadership skills when combined with relevant domain and functional expertise can transform your entire career growth and help you have a fulfilling career.
Tips for Effective Time Management
After studying and analyzing how time is spent, why time is wasted, and where time is wasted you need to decide about the changes required for effective utilization of time. For this purpose, a large number of remedial measures can be taken by you. The first and foremost determinant of a planned and purposeful utilization of time is to develop consciousness of the value of time at all levels of the organization. Planning, goal setting, and defining priorities are concerns to addressed immediately.
Recognizing Stress & its Sources
As an individual, you almost certainly know what stress feels like. Stressors are events or situations to which people must adjust. Stressors may be physical or psychological in nature. The level of severity of stress is determined not merely by exposure but the intensity, duration, and frequency of stressors. The sources of stress are many. They arise from multiple areas both with the individual and from the environment.
Functional skills are the core competencies that can be transferred to different work areas like understanding of finance is independent and a finance expert can comfortably adapt to a manufacturing or service industry. Functional skills are obtained by understanding the various processes and the principles applicable to a business function. Functional experts are in great demand as they are specialists and required to manage the business processes like human resources, operations, or finance.
Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. The best time management techniques improve the ways you work. Time management refers to managing time effectively so that the right time is allocated to the right activity. Learn more about the five steps for effective time management viz. study, identify, analyze, decide, and implement.
Concept & Definition of Stress
Stress is a popular expression used by people in day to day life. Pressures of day to day living sometimes necessitate coping or dealing with them and stretch the body beyond its natural capacity. They are called stressors. Stress is a natural, ongoing dynamic, and interactive process that takes place as people adjust to their environment.
A good leadership style is something that every effective leader must have in order to succeed, but identifying what that entails or does not entails might be difficult to understand. Most of the research on leadership focuses on the exemplary, best practices, and positive attributes of effective and successful leaders. This article talks about a new approach to learn leadership using lessons from bad leadership. That is the lessons to be learned by examining leaders who have not effectively exercised their power, authority, or influence.
Emergent leadership occurs when a group member is not appointed or elected as leader, but rather that person steps up as the leader over time within-group interactions. Have you ever faced challenges in getting accepted into your new role of position as a leader? Groups don't automatically accept a new "boss" as a leader. Emergent leadership is what you must do when taking over a new group. Learn more about emergent leadership.
Evaluating Your Career Interests
Want to find out what you are best at when it comes to proactively building your career? What are your real interests? The first step in career planning is reflecting. Reflecting upon your own self, to be more self-aware, and then following your dreams with both your heart and mind. Here is an opportunity to begin exploring yourself. At the end of the process, you will have a far better understanding of your desires than you have currently.
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