Managing a team can be very rewarding when you feel confident around them. Even if you don’t see yourself as a ‘people person’, learning to care about your team will help you improve your team’s performance.
At Balance at Work, we often get involved in helping our clients hire the best people for their teams.
We also care a lot about how they retain them!
Read on to benefit from our experience working with teams in all sorts of organisations over many years.
As an exercise, imagine I’ve asked you to tell me the following about each of your top performers:
How would you go? Would you know all the answers about your team?
If you found some gaps, it might be time to do some research – by which I mean having some conversations.
Your interest in the answers to these questions demonstrates your interests in your team as people, not just as resources.
It’s important to engage your employees, even when it feels hard for you. Having conversations about the history, purpose and future of your organisation can be a great place to start.
If engaging with them doesn’t come naturally, you may be surprised what a difference some coaching will make to your confidence. Showing you are willing to try something new can inspire the people around you, too!
Susan Rochester has been managing director of Balance at Work since 2006. Susan has a natural tendency to balance analytical thinking with an optimistic outlook to set direction and solve problems. She is an effective facilitator and constantly creates new and more effective ways of doing things, motivated by helping others to achieve their goals.