What a new Team leader should do

 

The leadership in itself is a very demanding and different kind of role. As a team member you are assigned a job and you try to achieve the desired result. In the process you may have to interact with a few colleagues for completing the assigned task. But as a leader, you are responsible for the performance of the team. The team has to deliver and deliver consistently. No member of the team should feel left out or ignored as it may hamper his engagement and performance. When I talk about performance it is not the performance of the individual only, it is the performance of the team.

 For somebody who is already in an organization and becomes a leader, it may be slightly easier. But what happens if somebody comes from some other organization or when some new inexperienced person joins the team. 

From my experience let me make it clear – do not expect hand-holding and support from everyone around. Anything you can definitely expect, is competition.

Getting people to work together isn’t easy. It has been seen that sometimes many leaders skip over the basics of team building in a rush to start achieving goals to demonstrate their capabilities. But your actions in the first few weeks and months can have a major impact on whether your team ultimately delivers results in the long run and on a regular basis. What steps should you take to set your team up for delivering successfully on continuous basis? How do you form group or work norms, establish clear goals, kind of communication you ensure and create an environment where everyone feels comfortable and motivated to contribute? Every member of the team should feel his worth.

Whether you’re taking over an existing team or starting a new one, it’s critical to devote time and energy to establish- how you want your team to work, not just what you want them to achieve. The first few weeks are critical. People form opinions pretty quickly, and these opinions tend to be sticky. It is always better to give proper weightage to planning to get the best results. If you don’t take time upfront to figure out how to get the team working well, problems are always going to come up. You either pay upfront or you pay later. Here’s how to start your team off on the right foot. If the team working is coordinated well and team understands its responsibility, results will follow.

Know your Team  

·       One of your first priorities should be to get to know your team members and to encourage them to get to better know one another.

·       Resist the urge to immediately start talking about the work and the task outcome, and focus instead on fostering team spirit . People should have a feeling of mutual faith and trust.

·       We should have some team-building exercises. One particularly effective exercise is to have people share their best and worst team experiences.

This will help everyone get on the same page about what behavior they want to encourage—and avoid—going forward. This will also ensure proper communication within the team without hurting anybody’s sentiments.

Project Your Picture

The team members would like to know about the new leader, his values, his monitoring systems etc. Team members will want to know how you define success. Use your initial interactions with team members as an opportunity to showcase your values. Explain what’s behind each of your decisions, what your priorities are, and how you will evaluate the performance, individually and collectively. This clarity is very essential for improving engagement of employees and their motivation to deliver. By communicating your vision and values, you will show your team that you’re committed to a healthy degree of transparency and create positive momentum around yourself in the new role.

But mind you , whatever statements you make should be your true reflection ,not merely words. You can cheat your team and command response and respect.

How will the team work

You also need to explain in detail how you want the team to work. Now there may be two situations- if you are new and inexperienced or new but experienced enough. The response of the people will be different in both the cases because they would have their own experiences to influence. In both the cases caution and alertness is the key. As I said , initial few days are very important and demand a lot of hard work and home work.

When you have newer team members coming on board, don’t assume that veteran team members will explain to the new recruits how things are supposed to be done. You may be new but , it’s your job as a leader to set expectations and explain processes. If you don’t make those norms clear for everyone, you risk creating an environment where people may feel confused, unrecognized ,  uncertain, or disengaged .

Setting goals for the team

  One of your most important tasks as a team leader is to set ambitious but achievable goals with your team’s input. Always ensure that there is a challenging stretch. But make sure that all the inputs, clarifications are available so that the tem feels motivated and capable to achieve the set goals.  Make clear what the team is working toward and how you expect it to get there. By setting these goals early on, the group’s decision making will be clearer and more efficient, and you’ll lay the framework of holding team members accountable.

Most of the times , managers inherit their teams, which often means they aren’t creating new goals, but clarifying existing ones. In those instances, your challenge as a manager is to reorganize roles or rethink strategies to best achieve the goals at hand.

Be accessible

If there’s one thing that new managers need to remember, it’s that over-communicating in the early days is always preferable. How you do that—via big meetings, one-on-ones, email, or shared progress reports—will vary from team to team and manager to manager. Here also new managers have to work more. Always make sure that the desired relevant communication is available with the team members well before the assignment zero time. This will ensure proper planning at every level and minimize mistakes/errors.

Making an early impact 

 It is very important for a new leader to make his mark and make an impact. Identifying and solving a business problem that has a quick and dramatic impact early on shows that you can listen and get things done. There may be some employee related issues, some environment issues, some problems related to basic necessities or some basic facilities / tools etc. which may not cost much but are ignored or not given proper weightage . Taking swift action demonstrates that are learning and are concerned about the team. But most importantly, achieving an early win encourages the team to perform . It motivates people, and establishes you as a good leader. It can also you win you goodwill you might need later if the going gets tough.

New recruits may sometimes find situation very different as they will feel that everybody around i.e. junior or senior is an expert in his field and is also senior age wise. But avoid uncle ji syndrome. Never ever try to learn things from your juniors, treating them as your Guru. They will be happy and welcoming to become your Guru but that Guru will try to remain your Guru forever. Respect their skills , talent and capabilities. But the best course is observing, read documents, study processes – as I said a lot of work in the beginning. Mind you the day you are able to point out a mistake in something which is being done wrongly, your process of acceptance as capable leader will begin.