As your team begins to work together, you need to establish a way each team member can exchange ideas and build mutual trust. Successful groups are built on trust and collaboration. A free exchange of ideas, in an open environment, will allow your team to get to know each other and enable you to check on how they work together. Learn some tips to help build team trust and establish personal bonds.
Setting up a series of informal meetings, early on in your project, offers an ideal opportunity for team member exploration. Like other teams, your people will also most likely progress through several predictable stages of team formation and help them bond with each other, as they move from being strangers to form a cohesive team. Use this time to discuss your project, delegate particular tasks, set individual roles, and discuss objectives. Always make sure that everyone involved understands every stage of their involvement.
Use the following six-step approach to cultivate an environment of trust within your team:
Employees will never work to their full potential if they don't feel trusted by management. Trust the intentions of your people to do the right thing. Employees who do feel trusted are higher performers and exert extra effort, going above and beyond role expectations. Trust they want to make the right decision, and make choices that, to the best of their understanding are the best and, still might work. Trusted employees feel more valued, which will help to make them feel more engaged in their work.
Reward desired behavior by letting your team know that they will be rewarded for a job well done and supported if they run into difficulties. Make sure your team feels valued. Interact frequently and give yourself opportunities to let your team know a job is being done well. Or they will be supported and guided to do the course correct if necessary. With positive reinforcement, you add a positive reward when a person is showing desired behavior. As a team member ensure to be trustworthy and establish your credibility. Be reliable. Always try to accomplish what you say, do it on time, and without any excuses.
Generally, we all start our careers being a member of a work team, and gradually may find ourselves in a team leader role, at some point in our career. Learn from mistakes and let people learn from their mistakes. Establish a culture where people who take action and make a mistake will be viewed positively in your empowered organization. Punished learners do not learn the new skill; instead, they learn to avoid the person who punished them by taking fewer risks. Mistakes help people learn to become empowered
Most of the organizations today we work for have certainly changed from the previous traditional ways of working (such as hierarchical based organizations or functionally driven organizations) to matrix-based organizations where the relevance of team-based approaches have gained even more importance. The biggest challenge that leaders face while working with such structures is, how do they as team leaders ensure the empowerment of employees and start sharing their leadership responsibilities with the team members to maximize creativity and productivity. Delegation and trusting someone to do a job are also empowered. Demonstrate trust in others so there is a foundation for them to trust you. Always remember trust goes both ways.
Once you have empowered people hold others accountable and set the expectations as early as possible. Demonstrate accountability in all your actions. Remember there is no true glory without accountability. Take the opportunity to clarify the behaviors expected of each team member. Use your Team Charter to build an understanding of team objectives. Each person should clearly understand the goals of the group and should know how these fit with your organization's overall objectives. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) linking your team's tasks to your organization's goal and objectives and use these indicators to start managing performance. Team members should be clear about the definitions of these KPIs and must understand how they affect them directly so that they understand their deliverables and how they will be measured. Provide all the needed materials and equipment to do the job effectively.
One of the most important roles that you have as a team manager is that of keeping individuals motivated and energized to keep working for organizational goals. Regular feedback helps employees efficiently direct their attention and energies, helps them avoid major errors and dead ends, and keeps them from learning things they later will have to unlearn at great cost. Try to tailor your efforts based on the different needs of each individual (refer to the Situational Leadership Model). Building effective teams is a continuous process – keep revisiting each step of this process on a regular basis.
Emergent leadership occurs when a group member is not appointed or elected as leader, but rather that person steps up as the leader over time within-group interactions. Have you ever faced challenges in getting accepted into your new role of position as a leader? Groups don't automatically accept a new "boss" as a leader. Emergent leadership is what you must do when taking over a new group. Learn more about emergent leadership.
Tips for Effective Time Management
After studying and analyzing how time is spent, why time is wasted, and where time is wasted you need to decide about the changes required for effective utilization of time. For this purpose, a large number of remedial measures can be taken by you. The first and foremost determinant of a planned and purposeful utilization of time is to develop consciousness of the value of time at all levels of the organization. Planning, goal setting, and defining priorities are concerns to addressed immediately.
Concept & Definition of Stress
Stress is a popular expression used by people in day to day life. Pressures of day to day living sometimes necessitate coping or dealing with them and stretch the body beyond its natural capacity. They are called stressors. Stress is a natural, ongoing dynamic, and interactive process that takes place as people adjust to their environment.
Stress is an essential part of our life. No one can live without stress. Stress can be beneficial as well as harmful. Stress as a positive influence adds excitement and hope while as a negative influence it can result in destructive feelings, anger, and depression. Although the general orientation to stress is to consider unfavorable outcomes, yet one must have observed that stress experiences may also facilitate the development of effective and varied coping behavior, increased personal resources, and lead to a sense of competence in development. Stress at a moderate level is not only inevitable but may be useful for physical and mental well-being.
Reasons behind Wastage of Time
Under-utilization of time may be due to the faulty system or faults of manager/officer/leader or due to lack of planning. There could be many factors driving the procrastination behavior like system issues, personal work habits, and lack of delegation, personality traits, and bad working habits of the leader, failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts, obstacles, and lack of far-sightedness.
Navigating your career journey will hopefully include a series of experiences that challenge your skills and abilities in ways that are satisfying and rewarding. Only you can manage your career. That means you must determine what things you are passionate about, what your goals are, both professionally and personally, and how much energy you are willing to invest along the way. Learn how to build an effective career path framework for yourself.
Robert Katz identified three leadership skills called - technical skills, human skills, and conceptual skills as the basic personal skills essential for leadership. Leaders must possess these three skills that assist them in optimizing a leader's performance. Technical skills are related to the field, human skills are related to communicating with people and conceptual skills related to setting the vision.
Discover Your Career Direction
The process of finding career direction begins with specific career exploration and identification of a career that could be passionate about, a career that allows you to make the optimum use of your talents. After identification of the career, you need to acquire skills and tools, and education that can help you get entry into your dream career. Learn the important tips that you cannot afford to miss.
Technology represents tremendous value if you view it from the proper perspective. IT empowerment also has its various levels in any organization. As a CIO or IT Senior Leader, you should try to move the technology function up the value chain. Learn how to transform your service delivery organization being looked upon as another cost center to a business partner that provides valuable services and brings competitive advantage for the business.
Recognizing Stress & its Sources
As an individual, you almost certainly know what stress feels like. Stressors are events or situations to which people must adjust. Stressors may be physical or psychological in nature. The level of severity of stress is determined not merely by exposure but the intensity, duration, and frequency of stressors. The sources of stress are many. They arise from multiple areas both with the individual and from the environment.
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