Managing teams is a huge challenge and rewarding career because you are judged by your boss and
by the team that you manage. This book is written to a manager and contains 50 secrets about the
successful management of teams. The secrets are organized into seven themed chapters.
As a manager you must know what you mean by “my team”. Basically team is referred to a group of
people and a common goal. Ask yourself this questions; do you confident that your team now have
a common purpose that is clear, articulated and understood by all?; Are they a group of people who
have complementary skills and abilities?; Do they work together and depend on each others?. To
be a successfully team manager/leader you must have some followers. Effective “followership” is a
prerequisite of effective team management.
To understand the meaning of team, now you must able to form you own team. So pick the right
people for the right job. However when choosing the people, you must not only choose the person
that have technical competence to do the job, but who will also work harmoniously with their
colleagues and you. After that, get your team performing quickly. Create a team identity that gives
individuals a powerful sense of belonging. Create a team vision so that they all facing the same
say on the road to your goal. Then set the ground rules earlier to make them understand what
behaviour is acceptable among members of the team, including you as a team leader. To get them
work together you must first understand and aware of the differences of their roles and task. Then
use this knowledge to develop and manage your team. And to measure the teamwork, use GRIPS
(Goals, Roles, Interactions, Process and Style). The last part of forming your team is to finds way to
avoid a “silo mentality” with team within teams. Silo mentality refers to the battles between inter-
department in one company.
To lead you team, first you must be able to define a tasks, create it and set its objective. This mean
you must write job description of the individual to the team vision. Secondly you must build inter-
dependencies. Means that they can work together and depends each others, so that they can
functions successfully as a team. Third you must avoid working full day doing technical stuff and
leaving any management activities. As a manager you must not underestimate the time needed to
manage you team properly. You must also be able to identify misery staffs and you job is to keep
people as positive as possible, and this means managing the miseries. At this level, you have to lead
by example, and you must therefore always present a positive front to your team. These mean that
you should take care your health, relations and treat well yourself. You should aware when your
staffs do a job well done; you should praise them in public. This can motivate the team as well as
the person. Recognition and award is so important for them to feel appreciate in what they are
doing. However when rewarding a person, you must not reward everyone the same as you may
see a collapse in motivation. You must understand that they see their contribution is undervalued
in relation of that of others. After understand the rewarding concepts, make sure that you are not
monkey manager. Monkey in referred to task or assignment. Do not to take the task from your
team member, but help them to solve the problem together. You must then delegate the work
well to support your team. Good delegation utilizes people’s strengths, weeds out of weaknesses,
spreads the workload equitably, maximizes output, develops a multi-skilled team, show trust in
people, encourage responsibilities and prepares people for promotions.
Communicate with your team
You must then arrange a team briefing to provide information and the opportunity for people to
express views and ask questions. But remember brief, mean brief. Beside you can also decide who
to know what to give an appropriate level of information for the person and situation. And as a
manager you should listen to your team. Otherwise you’ll be less successful. You also need to
constantly remind your boss of the great job your team is doing.
Protect and serve your team
A real team manager works for the team. Without a team there is no job for a manager. So the
manager’s role is to be a servant leader to the team. Being a servant leader mean people will follow
you rather than having to be dragged behind. So you should build and keep trust to your team. This
mean they can work without you watching them. If they can’t trust you, then they won’t believe that
you are worth working for. You earn trust through your behaviours, not your rank or position. The
whole team needs your active support at all times. So as a team manager, you need to treat them
as a whole, thinking of them as a unit that needs to be protected. You must also keep reminding
yourself that everyone in your team is unique individual. Don’t encourage egotistical and irritable
in your team. Another important part in team is to manage your own boss. If your boss is a weak
manager, then it is you to stand up for you and your team’s rights. If you don’t manage your boss,
no one else will, and your team will suffer. Then, you should manage out uncooperative people
who won’t work within the team; otherwise you don’t have a team. This because the person will
damages the morale and productivity of the whole team.
Manage team changes
Nothing stays the same for the long, this is certain. As a manager you must learn to let people go,
even you prefer to keep them. However try to minimize the emotional effects of redundancy by
being objective, honest and considerate. Plan ahead and learn how to manage survivor’s staffs. The
first thing you must do is to get them to air their opinions and feelings and get their emotions off
their chests.
Disband your team
One of the tough challenges for a manager is to say goodbye to their team member. To face it you
must prepare and plan ahead for a proper goodbye. Take your time and remember this could be the
last time the team members see each others, so make it a good memory. Then take a time to reflect
and learn from it. However don’t give up in your life, spread the word that you are finishing, so that
you networking aware and can offer you and your colleagues new roles. Last but not least always
keep in touch with you ex- boss and your ex-team mate. You never know what will happen in future,
so keep in touch as people like to do business with people they know and trust.
Real team manager should read this book to add their current knowledge on team management. I
personally inspired after reading this book and recommended to all current manager and potential
leader in our company. I had practice some of it, and it works!
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