Team Leadership
One of the most difficult tasks that a company’s management team has is building effective communications within their departments. Effective communications with all levels of management as well as co-workers is essential to employee morale as well as increased productivity. The rationale behind that is that a lack of communication skills within the business leadership structure causes stress and tension among the workers. These feelings then develop into feelings of worthlessness and into feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.
Smart people often seek out useful leadership books and learning material that will help them along the path to happiness and team leadership. These days, most tend to be rather disappointing, but one e-course that is still respected by leadership professionals such as myself is The 11 Forgotten Laws which I consider an essential ‘crash course’ in the principles you need to know to further your teamwork or leadership skills and even find happiness in other areas of your life.
Team leadership skills are essential to the creating a work environment that is both productive and loyal. If the management team leaders are tuned in to the needs and feelings of the workers on their team, the workers are going to care more about the productivity and quality of the work they are assigned to do. Communication involves everyone within a management team, both supervision and employees. A lack of communication in any area within the management team structure will break down the morale, and once moral has decreased for the team, they will no longer be interested in doing any more than the minimum that is expected. In a production environment this may not be as noticeable since there will always be those who don’t pay attention to anything that is going on around them, concentrating solely on their own work; however, in a sale environment, the results can be disastrous.
Unfortunately, some management styles or leadership characteristics prohibit the thought of developing a rapport with employees, let along communication, but be assured that this is the least productive management style and does nothing to help with the moral of the department or the efforts of the corporation in increasing productivity or sales volume. The manager who continually uses this approach without seeing the detrimental effects will certainly be on the losing end of the bonus list at year’s end when it’s too late to turn things around.
What is your management style? Do you tend to rule the department with an iron fist or do you effect communication between workers and supervision? Look at the statistics of your team leadership and see if there are areas needing improvement, and if so, decide if communication that is more effective is the answer to that improvement. The better a team communicates with management, the more equipped each is to understand the need for meeting and improving goals. If you are not communicating effectively with your team, now is the time to improve your communication skills.
Thanks For Reading – Now It’s Time To Act
We mentioned ‘The 11 Forgotten Laws’ audio, reading & video e-course in this article. If you’d like to stop merely thinking and start actually doing then you can read my full review here and see what it did for me, and more importantly – what it can do for you.
How To Pay Quiet And Subtle Flattery
This is just a quick post sharing a cheeky tip that I learnt from a collegue a long time ago.
People used to speak very differently in the 1950’s. It wasn’t just the way people talked, but the words they used that sounded different. However, that bygone era past shouldn’t be totally ignored by the young people of today. Infact, the opposite applies – we can actually use the ‘old fashioned’ and polite way of talking in order to pay an effective compliment to someone we are talking to.
How do you do this? By simply slipping polite phrases and courtesies into your speech as you speak to older people. For instance, when you accidentally brush past someone, you should say “Oh, I’m sorry Sir/Ma’am” in a very natural way. Its so effective because it makes the other person stop and think, while you can just carry on upon your way!
Building in little habits such as this into your behaviour can really improve your reputation with older team members and collegues. Its now completely automatic for me to call strangers ‘Sir/Ma’am’ in a confident and polite manner. As an added bonus, you won’t believe how compliant shop staff are to someone who addresses them respectfully!
The 3 Grades of Teamwork Attitude
Often in the course of my job, an almost mythical ‘teamwork attitude’ is referred to. While I’m sure it makes perfect sense on branded ‘policy’ posters – what is the right teamwork attitude to have? Is there one perfect attitude? And if so – how does one go about obtaining it? Does all leadership theory offer consistent advice on the issue?
From one point of view, there are three different frames of mind associated with teamwork.
Dependence
This is the earliest and least productive state of mind. This is the attitude that you form when you are content with the idea that you rely heavily upon others to help you complete your own work. Someone with this attitude may typically avoid a lot of responsibility and shy away from trying new tasks and growing as an individual. Team mates will often become frustrated at the lack of effort this individual is bringing to the table. This attitude causes the team member to gain less skills and grow into a position whereby they cannot help being dependent. They become stuck in a circle of dependence and lack of team leadership.
As a new joiner at a company, you will undoubtedly have to rely on other key members of staff to be able to finally stand on your own two feet. As long as you appreciate this is a necessary stage, and will pass extremely quickly after you put in hard work and the desire to learn, you will soon transcend from dependance to…
Independence
Independence is the attitude and self confidence that comes from being able to complete a task by one’s self. Independent people often take the brunt of the hardest work, and have a stressful work environment. They also continually seek to prove their effectiveness and worth to their boss, which can make their happiness very sensitive to approval from their seniors.
Some succeed at life with this attitude, while some just get crushed under the weight of high expectations from leadership management. They start to get older and realise that this isn’t good enough A lucky bunch of people begin to see this attitude as actually being flawed. They discover that there is a 3rd attitude that only most effective team leader appreciates…
Interdependence
Interdependence is a brilliant attitude that improves upon the independent state of mind. An interdependent team member does not shy away from responsibility nor seek to minimise their workload. They do however appreciate that sometimes it is best to delegate. All-to-often, team leaders retain the ’senior’ tasks for themselves and continually dish out the same menial work to their subordinates. Little do they realise that a junior member of the team would be thrilled and motivated incredibly well from being given a chance at more challenging work. Interdependence is the belief that a team will work far better when everyone aligns their needs to the tasks (as in the above example), and works together as a coherent team with synergy. It’s easy to motivate your team when they’re in this state of mind.
In a different approach to gain interdependence, people have often sought out useful leadership books and learning material that will help them along the path to happiness and leadership. These days, most tend to be rather disappointing, but I’m pleased to point you torwards one e-course that is still respected by leadership professionals such as myself:
The 11 Forgotten Laws. It’s generally seen as an essential and core ‘crash course’ in the laws and secrets you need to know to further your leadership & career and even help find happiness in other areas of your life. Its an excellent base upon which you can build your personal development.