As a team manager, you need to show the right level of balance when it comes to being a team player and being a more authoritative role within the company. Whether you’re a manager of two people or a dozen, it’s important to grow within this role.
There are a number of skills and practices that you can do to improve your role as a team manager and lead with your best foot forward. Here are some top tips for improving your skills as a team manager this year.
Always show transparency in your actions
When it comes to being a manager, it’s important to show transparency. You’re in a role of management, which naturally puts you a little higher up in the hierarchy. That also means that some staff may have reservations about opening up or being as close to you when it comes to the relationships you have in the workplace.
That’s why it’s important to show transparency in all of the things you do. Whether you’re new to the management role or not, being honest in everything you do will only benefit your relationships with colleagues in the long run.
Invest in collaborative apps and tools
To help with communications, it’s important to invest in collaborative apps and tools. That helps ensure you’re building relationships with everyone, both in your team and across the organization. Some of the best team management apps are going to help you put your skills to use and to make your life a little easier as a result.
Make sure you’re looking at all of the collaborative platforms that are available and that might be useful for your management approach.
Give and take feedback
With team management, it’s important to be open to criticism, whether it’s good or bad. As a team player and a manager, feedback remains an important part of your role and the best place to get it from is your colleagues.
As well as dishing out the feedback, you must be willing to take it, even if that means setting your pride and ego aside. Always open yourself up for feedback too by asking for it from your staff members.
Check-in with your staff regularly
Checking in with your staff is a necessity because not everyone can always know what’s going on behind closed doors. While your staff might be seemingly happy, that might not always be the case.
To help retain your top talent, it’s important to make sure they’re happy. From their salary to the working hours and the job itself, if you’re ticking off all the must-haves, that employee is unlikely to look elsewhere as a result.
Develop a personal management style
Finally, make sure you’ve developed your own personal management style. What works for you, might not work for another manager and vice versa. That’s perfectly fine as it’s an individual style that you should create with your own personality and way of working.
Improving your skills as a team manager is only going to make you better in your role and better for those you manage.
