Not all these tips are useful for jobs which are efficiently programmed and don’t need much management because they are skills learned once and then only repeated efficiently over and over again in a robotized way. If you have to lead a creative team of workers and not human robots then these tips can be helpful.
PROVIDE YOUR TEAM WITH THE BASICS
That means judiciously setting aside enough time to do the work, making sure workers have access to resources such as information, expertise, and equipment which will be needed. Make sure that they will have the skills or techniques which are necessary to do the job. If the job needs new skills then set aside enough time for your workers to learn those new skills.
MATCH UP PEOPLE AND SKILLS
Match up competent job skills for those working together. Eliminate combinations of workers which won’t work because they are not good at sharing responsibility or have personality flaws which impair good communication.
There are introverts who prefer to work alone and extroverts who frequently don’t mind sharing work. Try to divide up job tasks into ones which can largely be done independently and others which will require more cooperation and match up the people with the tasks. You should have the wisdom to hire skilled workers in the first place and quickly get rid of the ones that aren’t skilled or have severe personality flaws.
ENCOURAGE THE EXPRESSION OF NEW OR DIFFERENT IDEAS BEFORE AND DURING THE PROJECT.
Encourage creativity is another way of saying that you should provide an atmosphere that encourages independent thinking and a free exchange of new or different ideas, especially before the project begins. Your workers should feel that your way is not always the right way and that it is always subject to tweaking and modification before and during the project.
ENCOURAGE CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Make sure that personal growth and success translates into better pay or more time and money for new skill development. Try to teach workers how other members of the company are working or what the structure of the company looks like. Show them what it means to climb up higher in the management hierarchy or get higher in pay scale with more perks or privileges.
RUN EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT MEETINGS
Keep in mind the important questions which should be asked and answered during a meeting. Who, what, where, when, how, and how much. Who is going to speak next, who is going to work on a task, what are we going to talk about, when does this knowledge apply, how will the tasks be done, and how much time and even money it will take, etc.
BUILD TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS
This basically means being honest, truthful, and sincere and expecting your team to be the same when they interact with team mates. No back stabbing permitted and other forms of lying which may surface. Mistakes will be made and there will be failures but giving appropriate praise and acceptance of reasonable failures without condemnation or threats should create a relatively secure team environment without fear.
MOTIVATE YOUR TEAM WITH A HAPPY OPTIMISTIC MOOD
Nothing inspires workers more than a happy competent optimistic leader who knows how to reward and judiciously praise workers for a job well done and knows how to deal optimistically with failure when it arises. Judiciously adjust less rewards and praise for the easy jobs and more for the harder ones which are done successfully. More praise and reward should go to the harder tasks and individual success should be broadcast throughout the team appropriately so that a worker feels that the team members also know of his or her achievements or successes.
CLEARLY DEFINE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EACH WORKER AND MAKE SURE THAT THEY FOLLOW THROUGH WITHOUT TRYING TO PASS THE BUCK OR TRYING TO GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR THEM.
Workers will run into problems which seem insolvable or have such a workload that they may try to unload some of it on others. Make appropriate adjustments if there seem to be bottlenecks and clearly communicate the goals of the company and the responsibilities of each member in it if the borders of responsibility begin to blur.
TRY TO SELFMOTIVATE YOUR WORKERS
Constantly having to encourage and motivate workers to devotedly do their work with pep talks and other forms of motivation which are cheer leader tactics is not good. Develop as much selfconfidence as possible with sincere, just praise, and rewards and not overhyped pep talks. A selfmotivated worker will work hard to push him or herself without an external unnecessary crutch and do the job better and more efficiently. “You did it again, your effort did it, your dedication did it, you did it very well, you performed excellently, your work was outstanding, your work deserves more praise than I can give, your hard work paid off, etc.” can be words which will encourage selfmotivation.
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