6 Crucial Team Management Skills That Can't Be Overlooked

It takes exceptional leadership qualities and effective team management skills to build a highly successful team.

Team building requires a well-honed understanding of your team, their strengths, and what excites them to work and keeps them motivated. In a team, the role of the team leader requires a level of skills and dedication that takes time to hone.

Alongside the technical side of the industry, a team leader should be well versed in the emotional side of the job. A good team manager knows how to play the team’s strengths to the full. Subsequently, a well-managed team meets its goals by using the talents of each team member to best effect.

So how do we go about building an efficient team?

6 Essential Team Management Skills For Team Leaders

A team manager’s job is never easy. That being said, having the following set of 6 important team management skills certainly helps with navigating the everyday triumphs and challenges:

1. Industry Expertise

Having industry expertise is a skill that simply can’t be overlooked. Rapid changes in the industry trends mean that the way we work is evolving as well.

Thus it becomes crucial that a team leader master the nitty-gritty details of the company and hit the ground running. Good managers need to know enough to develop a plan, execute it, manage it properly, and lead the team into success.

To run an effective team where the team members can value and respect the team leader, he should have the required experience, skills, and knowledge. There is a reason why industry expertise is a skill sought out by companies while filling a team leadership role.

An experienced team manager can:

• Figure out the best possible path to get to the result. This is in lieu of having been in the industry long enough to distinguish the most feasible technique.
• Knows how to manage project timelines as well as estimates better.
• Able to distinguish and hand out roles and responsibilities which suit everyone’s area of expertise in a team.

How To Do It

A good leader accepts that the learning never stops. Hence they are always keeping themselves updated with new knowledge, skills, and projects. Furthermore, they are dedicated to a common goal of having all the relevant skillsets and the applications of their niche industry under their belt.

2. Strategic Thinking

Strategic Thinking is about uncovering all the options and thinking long term.
-Pearl Zhu

Any thriving team leader knows the importance of strategic thinking for long-term success. Long-time managers know the vital role they play in translating strategic thinking into real-time results.

Team managers lacking in this skill will face the problem of not seeing the bigger picture and the obstacles resulting in business losses. This is where the team leader takes backstage and loses sight of the team’s contribution to the organization.

How To Do It

While there are many facets to this skill, at its core, it involves being able to:

• Withdraw from the present issues and see the bigger picture taking in internal as well as external factors.
• Understand the long-term organizational goals and how your team can contribute towards them.
• Learn about the internal and external influences driving change in your organization.
• Envision the potential futures as well as the roles and responsibilities for the team in the organization.

3. Good Managers Build Trustworthiness

Good team management skills are a necessity to build a successful team. Nevertheless, team leadership skills are more than just motivating, leading, and team building. It’s also about an environment of trust, honesty, and transparency that you cultivate with your team.

People work for people and not for organizations.

Your employees want a team leader who they can rely or fall back on during times of crisis. A good leader manages to convey that he has the team’s best interests at heart. Without this trust, team members are less likely to be engaged and motivated to go the extra mile for the job.

A lack of loyalty and trust in the team leader will harm the team’s productivity and question one’s management skills.

How To Do It

• Listen to your team. Actively listening to your people helps establish your trustworthiness. When your team feels they can confide in you with their problems, that’s based on their belief that you care and will take action for them.
• Be clear about your values. It’s necessary to be clear about the values you believe in. For example, if you say you value everyone’s input, you should create chances for other team members to contribute.
• Be transparent. Transparency, especially during challenging times, is the building block of trustworthiness. Being transparent allows your employees to know that you have got their back and can be trusted even when the situation is bad.

4. Effective Communication Skills

“I wish my team leader would stop being so clear and upfront about our project”, said no employee ever.

A good leader is often a great communicator. It is perhaps one of the most essential skills that a true leader must possess. Largely because all leadership skills become obsolete if you fail to communicate the roles and responsibilities to your team members.

When asked about failures in the workplace, a Salesforce study shows that 86% of respondents cited a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication.

Effective communication skills remove hindrances that lower efficiency and affect collaboration. Team managers, who are also great communicators, lay the groundwork for how communication is practiced on their teams.

According to Gallup, regular “team manager-employee” communication is correlated to higher employee engagement.

How To Get It

• Provide clarity on the team roles and responsibilities. It helps the team members establish what everyone should focus their time and energy on.
• Welcome personal feedback as well as give feedback. This opens up an effective communication channel between the team leader and the employees. It helps to build transparency as well as honesty in the workplace.
• Develop intra team communication strategies. Ensure that irrespective of the team role, race, gender, or sexual orientation, your team member feels safe to reach out to you in case of distress.

5. Time Management

As a team leader, one of the most prominent team management skills is determining how other team members devote their time.

Team managers know that important tasks often get overshadowed by urgent tasks. There are a host of different things that you might utilize your time on. But only long-time managers understand that hardly a few of those fall into the “important” category.

For any team’s long-term success, the team leader must prioritize managing his and the team’s time.

How To Do It

Whether you are a first-time manager or an old-timer, the skill of time management is unavoidable but easy to implement.

The US President Dwight Eisenhower broke time management into four groups, collectively known as The Eisenhower Matrix. Essentially each time management task falls into any one of these four groups:

• Do First (Urgent and Important): Tasks that need to be done immediately.
• Schedule (Important but Not Urgent): Tasks that can be scheduled to be done later.
• Delegate (Urgent but Not Important):Tasks can be delegated to someone else in the team.
• Don’t Do (Neither Urgent Nor Important): Tasks that need to be eliminated.

6. Team Building

Modern organizations are built around teams. Thus, it’s feasible that business growth is centered around the success levels of its teams.

Each team member brings their strengths to the team. Alongside, they bring along their unique values, beliefs, talents, and perspectives. But here’s the thing.

Creating a high-performing team is no cakewalk in the park. It is an all-encompassing job that requires effort, hard work, and some good old team building activities.

Bringing out the best in everyone is what you as a team leader should focus on. Building on strengths for fulfilling the common goal of the team and organization is what building a high-performing team is all about.

How To Do It

• Find the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Allocate roles and responsibilities based on it.
• Bring on a diverse set of people to your team. It will encourage different perspectives, but it will also ensure your team’s loyalty towards you.
• Improve upon the team’s communication.
• Be prepared to settle team disputes and bring unity during conflicts.
• Learn to manage the development stages of your team.

Conclusion

Think that there are any additional team management skills that we have left out? Tell us in the comments below!

This article is written by Iftekar Ahmed. He works as a Content Creator and Digital Marketer at Vantage Circle. When he is not playing guitar or solving puzzles, he is often seen fussing over foods he can't eat because he is on a perennial dieting spree. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com