Five Essential Management Responsibilities to Nail as a Team Leader
A leader’s five essential management responsibilities are essential to achieve your vision for your company and to set the tone for your staff. They guide and give feedback to all members of the team to ensure that they perform their responsibilities. Successful team leaders maintain that team morale is strong and that employees feel inspired to perform well.
Set goals, plan, and execute.
The objectives set must be achievable, specific, and challenging. They must also be communicated inside the team clearly. While being flexible enough to pivot under changing market dynamics, the planning phase needs to provide structure. Execution and transparency come after target setting and planning. The team leader has to ensure the completion of each objective and goal. This is more important than ever when it comes to protecting the team’s brand. Remember, the brand goes way beyond the logo. It’s mirrored in all that’s related to your team. This involves every conversation, clothes that everyone wears, and attitudes that each person on the team brings to every interaction.
Negotiate resources, roles, and autonomy.
Team leaders need to organize staff activities. Organizing the tasks and areas of focus of each member helps ensure that the efforts of all the positions within the team are directed towards a common goal. Every individual must feel responsible and mindful of the collective objective. They also must own their individual role and contribution to the team. Each person needs to have the resources and autonomy to accomplish their objectives. If you find yourself not trusting them with that authority, they are either a bad hire or you have a control issue. Either of those problems will stunt your growth and hamper your efficiency.
Select and empower those on their team.
By selecting and empowering people, team leaders can grow their team exponentially. We invest a great deal of time in the recruitment concept as an industry. In the majority of cases, I have found teams set the bar too low in qualifying who they take on. When team members are selected, leaders must detect where the strengths of the person are and how to effectively use them. For Inman readers, we have an assessment that you can use at no cost. Shoot me a message and I’ll be happy to share it.
To inspire the team members, you need to make them feel like an integral part of the overall group. Constantly reinforce why they are essential. Look for ways to express appreciation and regularly praise them for their contributions. Accolades are without a doubt, more important than compensation for most people.
“In the business world, the tendency of many leaders is to focus on the negative. This leads team members to work with less intensity, complain about trivial problems, and resist positive change. On the contrary, the leaders who bring positive attitudes increase the inclination of individual team members not only improve but to also help their teammates.”
Manage relationships.
The primary responsibility of any CEO, regardless of how large or small the organization or team, is to make everyone feel great about the team. This includes the clients, the team members, the other agents in the field, and the public. In today’s world, it is more important than ever to appeal on a human level by presenting suggestions, discussing strategies and procedures, defining the work of the team, and being respectful of others. Your team has become an extension of you. The more you take care of them the more care they can show to your clients.
In summary, the role of leadership and management may function in different capacities, but still, be the same in the creation of an organization. Leadership is nothing if it doesn’t create a systems’ based management framework, and management will have little help without the work of leadership as the backbone of values.
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