Developing Your Team

Leadership involves creating a compelling vision of the future, communicating that vision, and helping people understand and commit to it.

Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for ensuring that the vision is implemented efficiently and successfully.

• Thinking your current job knowledge and technical skills are enough to be a manager. Good management and people skills can be more important than technical skills.
• Failing to consult regularly with your boss, in an attempt to show that you can cope on your own.
• Approaching your boss without having thought a problem or its solutions through.
• Failing to assess what your customers want from you and your team.
• Using your authority inappropriately or not in the interests of the organization.

There's only so much that you can achieve working on your own, that's why it's important to delegate effectively. To successfully delegate:

• Explain what your team's role and goals are. Or even formalize it in a team charter, which can also be useful for keeping the team on track.
• Think about the skills, experience and competencies within your team, and start matching people to tasks. 

Whatever approach you prefer to adopt, you also need to bear in mind that different people have different needs when it comes to motivation. 

One size does not fit all. Some individuals are highly self-motivated, while others will under-perform without managerial input, and you need to be able to handle both. 

Meetings of all kinds, and regular ones in particular, are notorious for wasting people's time, so it's well worth mastering the skill of running effective meetings.

Being in charge, it’s easy to assume you know what others are saying, or that listening isn’t important and that your solutions are better. But learning active listening is key as it allows early detection problems, avoids costly misunderstandings, and builds trust within their teams. 

• Understand fully what your boss wants from you and your team so you'll be better able to meet with their approval.
• Ask your boss to coach or mentor you. You can usually learn a lot from him, but he may not be proactive about offering this. Think through things as far as you can before you approach them.
• Look after your team and protect it from unreasonable pressure. Learn skills like assertiveness and win-win negotiation, so you can turn work away or negotiate additional resources.
• Manage interactions with other groups. Use stakeholder analysis to identify groups relevant to you as well as what they want and what they offer.