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Businesses thrive on the positive chemistry between management and their teams. That is why proper management strategies are crucial to the success of any sales group. People in management must be alert and organized, as well as helpful and supportive to the people on their sales team.
In order to successfully manage a sales team, the goals and objectives of a business need to be clearly outlined for the sales people to reach them efficiently. Clarity of goals gives sales people an instrument for measuring their success. Reaching those goals becomes all the more doable when a sales team can measure their success on a scale of one through ten aligned with goals and objectives.
A successful sales manager must also be on top of any overhead issues that might affect the performance of the team. Whether there is trouble with the product being sold, or misunderstandings between the company and the service people, a manager must make sure that these problems are dealt with promptly.
As often as possible, managers must accentuate the positive when addressing their team. Sales people are energized by positive working environments, yet some managers confuse hard work with the need for a hard attitude. Managing with positive energy is the far more effective method for leading a successful sales team.
Managers must also be friendly with their sales team. Though the roles of management and sales are different, sales people feel more positive about working for companies where the management is level headed and easily approachable. A daily smile and a personal hello can be a powerful and effective way for managers to boost the morale of each person on their sales team.
A sales person is driven as much by recognition as they are by money. That is why managers should always have a special rewards system for the most successful people on their team. It could be a weekly spiff or a quarterly pizza party for the top performers on the team. An annual plaque of recognition for the number one sales person is also a nice business custom.
The key thing for managers to realize is that their personality will set the mood for the team. If the manager is constantly exhibiting a state of disarray or stress, then these feelings will be reflected by the sales team. Clarity, organization, a positive attitude, friendliness and an inspiring drive are the essential traits for managing a successful sales team.
L&R Merchandising is the company behind one of the most successful Kirby dealerships in the US, Kirby of Concord, which maintains consistent worldwide rankings, and provides exceptional customer service within the New Hampshire state.
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Multicultural teams have become very common in recent years. With cross border mobility becoming much easier the number of people moving from one country to another has grown significantly. This has also led to more people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds intermarrying. Their children could be born and grow up in different countries and have hybrid cultural identities. Globalization and the advances in communication and transportation technology have reduced trade barriers and increased interaction among people.
Is global homogeneity a feasible and desirable vision? Philosophically this would be very questionable. This would be immediately equated with suppression of differences and diversity, which are inalienable human rights. It can be argued that it would destroy cultures and diminish creativity. There are enough instances in human history e.g., the fate of the Native Americans or the Conquistador actions in South America, where one culture has by force exterminated other cultures. Then there are scores of other examples where aspects of cultures have blended through interaction e.g., India and the United States. Today, though genocides happen under our very eyes e.g., in the Balkans or in some parts of Africa, the prevailing models of cultures influencing others is mutual interaction, where there is ample room for retaining one's own cultural identity. As of the 2000 census, "minorities" have become the majority population in six of the eight largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Thus living with and managing diversity has become the central theme of this century.
Many studies have in fact shown that diversity in human capital actually leads to increased creativity and efficiency in many cases. Studies have also shown that the failure to successfully integrate diverse workforces has negative implications for organizational performance. This is most publicly expressed in legal actions, such as recent discrimination suits against multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Xerox.
The skills needed for managing with people from diverse backgrounds at work or outside the workplace can be very different because in the workplace we are in our work roles and there are many external constraints to our behavior. Many people actually spend more time awake with their colleagues than with their spouse and children. So any problems arising in this area will definitely spill over onto the private life.
Looking carefully into the factors that affect multicultural team leadership or management, we can identify five factors that operate at team levels:
National culture Corporate culture of the organisation Nature of the industry or functional culture (coal mine, marketing, accounting) Stage of team development Personal attributes
National Culture - There are ample theories and much research into how national cultures affect team behavior. Ger Hofstede's Culture's Consequences (1980) and Cultures and Organizations (1991) are two examples. National culture has many dimensions like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview. Generally we are dealing also with stereotypes and cultural biases here. Regional and personal life experience or character traits can override these ascribed 'national' culture traits. In real life this means that an Italian team member can be a shy, quite person or a German can be hopeless with timetables.
Corporate Culture - Corporate culture is very closely related to the functional culture and it is a result of a historical process where the founder and successive leaders have left their marks. A large multinational organisation is bound to have a more structured, hierarchic and bureaucratic approach to running its affairs while an Internet web design company with 5 young creative artists would be an entirely different environment.
Nature of the Industry - Coal miners, web designers and international bankers would seem to come from different worlds. Dress, language, etiquette, unwritten codes of behavior, accepted practice and skills needed on the job vary to a great extent in different industries. It is of vital importance that the industry, the organisation or the environment allows team members to display a sense of pride in one's professional identity.
Stage of Team Development - If the team is just recently formed with no history or experience, the rules of the game have to be learn by everyone. If the team has a history of performing efficiently, new entrants can rely on established practice and older members to teach them the skills required. The stage of development of the team member also plays a great role here. If the team is in the formation stage, the rules of the game are still being negotiated and people are learning their own roles. The 'veteran' team member has carved a secure role for himself while the entrant has to struggle.
Personal Attributes - Last but not least is all the other factors like personality, competence profile, the individual's own life experience, expectations of rewards, acknowledgment and satisfaction from working in the team as well as previous history of team working.
The first three factors are static factors, which means that their characteristics cannot be easily changed by individual action. Team members or even the whole team cannot change the national culture. Individuals, teams and organisations have to learn to adapt to them. In fact the efficiency of the team is directly correlated to how well this adaptation has been achieved. But intervention can greatly affect the last two factors of Stages of Team Development and Personal Attributes. A team can accelerate its progress from formation stage to the stage of maturity and an individual can change personal attributes by acquiring new competences.
Superior sustainable team performance can be achieved only if team members learn to take into account dimensions of organizational culture and those of national culture like orientation to time, style of communication, personal space, competitiveness and worldview. Only when these have been successfully adapted to their working practices to reflect the team members' background realities can teams actually see the added value that multicultural teams bring.
Rana Sinha is a cross-cultural trainer and author. He was born in India, studied and lived in many places and traveled in over 80 countries, acquiring cross-cultural knowledge and building an extensive network of professionals. He has spent many years developing and delivering Cross-cultural Training, Professional Communications skills, Personal Development and Management solutions to all types of organizations and businesses in many countries. He now lives in Helsinki, Finland and runs http://www.dot-connect.com, which specializes in human resource development as well as communication and management skills training with cross-cultural emphasis. Read his cross-cultural blog http://originalwavelength.blogspot.com
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One potential marketing strategy for franchisors is to set up two-year agreements with star franchisees to assist in the expansion of regional areas without selling those areas a master franchises. In doing so the franchisor can have more control over the marketing of new franchises and say over which territories and agreements will be entered into, without giving up any control.
The fee structure could be a percentage of franchise fees in each sale and a percentage of royalties. The duties of the star franchisee [Regional Team Manager] should be clearly defined we decided for our endeavors and so I came up with these set of rules for our company, perhaps this might give you some ideas if you are considering expanding your franchise company. Below is my list of responsibilities and rules that I used in my company;
Regional team manager will not build or maintain a web site on behalf of The Company or the Franchisee. A web site will be furnished and maintained at the expense of the Franchisor on behalf of the regional team manager.
Regional team manager will be responsible for collecting all royalties from franchisees in their exclusive territory and forwarding all such monies immediately upon collection to The Company. will forward the regional team manager's portion of collected royalties no later than the 30th of each month.
Regional team manager will be responsible for franchisees in their exclusive territory. Regional team manager agrees to visit each franchisee in their exclusive territory no less than once a month. Any marketing, technical, employee or other issue franchisees might have will be addressed by the regional team manager.
For this service the regional team manager will receive 50% of the collected royalties for each franchisee in their exclusive territory.
It is understood and agreed upon that nothing in this Agreement authorizes the regional team manager to make any contract, agreement, warranty or representation on Franchisor's behalf or to incur any debt or other obligation in Franchisor's name and that Franchisor shall in no event assume liability for, or be deemed liable hereunder as a result, of any such action.
Well this is what we did in our company of course I cannot give you legal advice as I am not a two-fit, lying, thieving, scoundrel, attorney. So, you need to get with one of those professional parasites and sit down without shooting them and ask them their advice on how to run your business and pay them $300 to tell you what you just learned here from me, someone who actually has had to make a payroll and who has actually done it. Consider this in 2006. If you are an attorney; go screw yourself. [in a nice way].
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.
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Virtual teams are so common, that I can honestly say that I was not a member of a team where we all were in the same building since 1995. From 1999 on, I was part of a virtual team, and I managed a virtual team that and no one was in my own country.
The troubles managing people that are remote are many, and here are just a few things that I have learned (the hard way) need extra attention. I am going to include examples where my best intentions failed because of the distance or difference in languages.
Before I begin, I am an American and I live in France. One of the first things that people on remote teams say is that "you can't understand what it is like to work in a language that is not your native language." Well, I can. I have done it for years and will continue to do it.
Basic Management
With remote and virtual teams we can't really manage daily activities as our parents did. In days of old the manager was on the same floor as his employees, and senior management was usually on the upper floors, but at least they were in the same building.
Build trust
All managers have to gain the trust of their local and remote teams. It is always much easier to lose trust, than to build, it. Trust needs special work when you are never face to face with employees - because you can't catch the body language and rolling of the eyes during a phone call.
When your people are not in the same room as you they tend to feel that any praise they receive is a light praise, or something obviously due. When they are criticized the criticism is often taken to harshly.
My personal example was a gent that worked for me in Sweden. He did a good job one year and I had recommended that he be promoted in level, receive a pay raise and a bonus. My recommendations were sent to my management before our review meeting. I the review, he asked for the promotion and pay raise - a lower pay raise than I had already recommended to senior management. What could possibly be better than getting more than you asked for?
Somehow he when he saw the numbers, I remember sending them by instant message because we both worked in an open space and I didn't want to say the numbers out loud. At first he was sort of shocked, then he was quite. I had no idea why. I should have reacted to the silence instead of continuing with the review.
The full review was almost done, I just had to ask what he wanted to do the coming year. Our company had a policy that year where every manager asked their employees if they wanted to leave the company (stock value had dropped) and if anyone wanted to leave we were going to offer a package. We had a script that we read. My manager read it to me, I said no. I read it to the gent in Sweden and he became horribly upset. Asked to end the call. Contacted his local HR representative and said that I was trying to get rid of him.
HR had the "do you want to leave" script that I read to him word for word, and they had his promotion and pay raise numbers in the computer system, and seeing the numbers made him trust HR. From that point on he had a hard time trusting me, even though 3 years later I promoted him again.
Workplace Communication
As the example above should show, you have to contact every member of your team regularly. How often is regular? Often enough that they feel
comfortable with you. Communication can be email, telephone, a face to face visit, or a text message on a cell phone. It can also be a hand written message delivered through office mail. I used to ask people in my company that were going to the country where my team members were to deliver something. Anything. A baseball cap with the company logo and something written in French, accompanied by a signed note.
Invent opportunities to get your together.
This works best when it is the entire team, but if you can only do parts, make sure that the people that don't attend the first meeting do get to attend the second. I had 3 of a 5 person team traveling one seek and they were all passing through Munich. One of my team member worked in Munich. I sent the 4th person, from the UK, to Munich and had everyone stay for a one day meeting that I could not attend. I was there by phone and video conference, but was not able to be there in person. The team found this to be one of the most productive meetings, I suppose because they could easily mute me and talk "behind my back" before coming up with a collective answer. This also did wonders for the team building trust in each other.
At any meeting, encourage team members to share difficulties and successes. I always brought up that I am and American in France, I have language issues like they do. I told of operations that I had. I have physical problems like some did. Try very hard to make sure your team knows that you are not a faultless person, part of the trust that you gain will come from honest and open communication.
Keep everyone up to date and aware of what is expected of them. Don't let any of them feel they are 'remote'. An essential element of your communication plan is...
Regular conference calls
I hate conference calls. But they are important for the team. If you have a team spread across countries, keep up to date on the working hours and holidays in the different countries. In France, calling a meeting after 7 in the evening is bad. In Holland, calling a meeting after 5 is considered bad.
National holidays differ. Use Microsoft Outlook, they have a feature that lets you choose to list different country and religious holidays. Take extra care when dealing with religious holidays.
Learn when your team has their weekend. There are some countries that don't have the Saturday and Sunday weekend. I was part of a team that called a meeting every Friday afternoon. Certain people on that call (who attended every call) were on their weekend. When I was asked to host the call for a month I set it for Sunday afternoon. There were a lot of people that didn't want to attend the weekend call, but after that odd month we never had a Friday call again.
Publish a schedule of calls, make them at the same time and day so that your team can build a schedule around them. Conference calls need to be run like any other meetings but with stronger control. Have an agenda and stick to it. Don't let the conversation drift, be careful about people that are native language speakers and tend to talk a lot. Repeat in appropriate terms any comment that may be confusing to people who don't speak the main language of the call.
Use video conferencing when you can. There are new products that focus on the speaker; very useful. At the beginning and end of a video call make sure to go around the virtual table and ask everyone to speak. this gives everyone at least 2 chances to speak up.
Cultural Differences
Be very aware of cultural differences. Some cultures don't say say no, or find it hard to say no. Different culture have different expectations of the managers. Even when you have a common language, some things are understood differently in different parts of the world.
Conclusion
Building trust is the most important aspect of managing a virtual or remote team. Cultural differences will possibly bring up the greatest trust issues and you really have to work on these.
Make sure that you have developed a sense of rapport with each member of your team before a group meeting, if possible. I have twice been made manager of groups, and no one except me was aware of the change until we were in a group meeting. If this happens, make sure you are as short and to the point as you can be, and use that first meeting to schedule time with each person on your team before the meeting has ended.
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One skill candidates often don't put a focus on when applying for an account manager job in London is the skill of team management. In many cases, managers-to-be are keen to demonstrate their aptitude for sales skills, for client relations, and for handling the minutiae and ins-and-outs of the account. However, one skill many candidates don't seem to put so much emphasis on is that of team management, or even some of the basic principles of leadership and motivation. While account managers can oversee every detail of their accounts themselves, often a manager will need an effective team around them to create the best value for clients, and ultimately keep the relationships beneficial for both sides.
Motivation
One of the key tasks of an account manager job in London, especially where many team members may always have an eye on alternative career prospects, is to make team members want to actively participate in working to further the account. One good strategy to achieve this goal is to identify a source of motivation team members might not find in their regular work. Among these options, two choices that can often be easy to emphasise in management are challenge and meaning.
Work for clients can provide additional challenges to overcome, or challenges can be set to find new opportunities within day-to-day work. Meaning is often overlooked when dealing with clients - it's easy to lose sight of the significance of the work a team undertakes. Effective managers work at helping their team find both challenge and meaning in their work - therefore enabling their best performance.
Attributes
In order to be successful when applying for an account manager job in London, a few key principles of team management should be kept in mind to ensure optimum performance. Effective account managers work hard to provide opportunities and recognition for members of their team, including creating new contacts to allow their team to function effectively, and in some cases autonomously, in order to allow the manager time to oversee different aspects of a client's accounts and have time to assess a client's needs.
Another principle is that of maximsing the contact with the account managers team. Demonstrating a personal interest in team members face-to-face can help motivate enthusiastic commitment to the account. It can be a challenge for an account manager to suppress their own ego and competitive streak enough to put the spotlight and recognition on their team members, but with good leadership, it can translate into a well-motivated, effective, and productive team.
Barbara Kolosinska (MREC CertRP) is a Sales Director for C&M, a leading travel recruitment agency who specialise in finding their clients the perfect account manager London across all sectors of the travel industry. C&M have access to the largest choices of account manager London from the UK's top travel employers.
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Have you ever been on a team building day or management development training session where you've thought "this bears no relation to my work?" You're not alone. Team building exercises are, in general, conceptual, designed to bond your team and make everyone enjoy working together productively. They don't tend to be tailored to specific work goals.
So how do you build a team that works together effectively on a day-to-day basis and achieves what you want? These 5 tips should help you maintain the right mindset to build any group into a functioning team.
1. Accept and appreciate diversity. This does not just refer to obvious differences, such as people needing flexibility for parenting, but to differences in personality, strengths, experience and views. If you appreciate and support these different traits, your team will be more sympathetic and celebratory of each other's differences too. This will lead to a more supportive and open team environment in which staff are not afraid to express opinions or ask for help.
2. Create standards and ensure people are treated equally. Maybe it will seem as if this is contrary to appreciating diversity, but it doesn't have to be. While people might need different types of support, as long as everyone knows they are entitled to the same levels of support, you are creating an equal environment.
3. Be open to new ideas. Never become closed-minded and never value tried and tested processes more than innovation.
4. Never forget how important tried and tested processes are. Again, contradictory, but a manager who is focussed entirely on new ideas but does not maintain processes and standards is useless, as their team will become confused and undisciplined. Similarly, a manager who cares only for maintaining the current processes will be too rigid, and the team will never progress under such a restrictive environment. Strike a balance and your team will follow the rules and processes but their creativity and enthusiasm won't be crushed.
5. Define success, both in terms of individuals and the team. The latter of these is often forgotten, but if the team knows what its collective function is and can form an idea of how to get there they will feel more united. Don't be scared to include them in discussions on these areas and gather their opinions on what they consider success as a team to be. It might be a common business goal, but it might also be successes around communication or co-operation on certain tasks. You can't dictate to them how they should go about becoming a team or force your views on them, it needs to be collaborative.
The tips above do not offer an exhaustive route to effective team management though they do offer a platform from which to develop your own team management style. Ultimately, it is a crucial part of management development training that can sometimes be tricky due to the massive variations in teams in terms of size, purpose, personalities.
Inspire offer a range of business & professional coaching & training courses including management development training in London. Running both on and off site programmes Inspire also offer professional development tools & resources to further improve business processes. For more information on the range of courses run by Inspire visit http://www.inspire-ing.co.uk
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Individual department or functional managers need to embrace ownership and responsibility for success and accomplishing defined strategic initiatives. However, to maximize the effectiveness of the organization, managers must be able to work with one another to achieve common goals.
To be effective the following six principles apply:
1. Accountability must be at the forefront of every initiative. Employees do want to be held accountable and they willing accept responsibility given the necessary training, information and the organization encourages empowerment.
2. Minimize oversight through confidence and empowerment. Do not micro manage. Workers will accept more responsibility if management isn't constantly looking over their shoulder. This encourages innovation and creativity but it requires effective communication.
3. Managers need to function more as facilitators and leaders. Coaching is a skill set that should be required training for all managers to improve team management. Regular performance discussions should be scheduled and strictly held to.
4. Performance management & performance measurement are key contributors to improved team management. Goals should be measurable and specific. Creating score cards is an effective tool to improve team performance.
5. Information sharing and effective communication are critical. Teams must have unrestricted access to all relevant information. If you can't trust someone on the team then they shouldn't be on the team.
6. Manager skill sets must be continuously reviewed and upgraded to allow them the opportunity to adopt new skills specifically related to coaching and mentoring. The manager's role must be redefined for the team environment and an emphasis on the servant style of leadership ("The Lead Wolf" model) is essential. (E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com for a copy of the Lead Wolf model of leadership)
Organizations that maximize success embrace the concept of "Team Leadership" and their managers are skilled at leading group problem-solving sessions maximizing collaboration across all functional units. A forum exists to educate and train managers on the problems and concerns of other functional departments. Communication is kept at the "Adult" level and an explicit understanding of respect exists throughout the culture of the organization. This feeling of mutual respect, trust and maturity becomes the foundation for teamwork and problem solving.
http://www.ceostrategist.com - Sign up to receive "The Howl" a free monthly newsletter that addresses real world industry issues. - Straight talk about today's issues. Rick Johnson, expert speaker, wholesale distribution's "Leadership Strategist", founder of CEO Strategist, LLC a firm that helps clients create and maintain competitive advantage. Need a speaker for your next event, E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com
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A manager should be able to motivate a team made up of individuals each of whom comes from a unique heritage. Therefore, for anyone who aspires to become a manager or business owner, he must carry out a thorough self audit to identify any areas of prejudice and which may cloud their judgment. Many of these prejudice and biases are unconscious and thus are not their fault.
Results are no doubt the bottom line of any team effectiveness. Teams should be composed of enough individuals with sufficient skills and experience in order to get the job done. Therefore, a manger needs to consider the task objectives, the skills and experience needed plus the time that the team will function as a unit.
A good manager provides equal opportunities for everyone. Equal opportunities mean getting to know individuals and valuing them for their unique contribution, giving them all a similar chance to contribute on an equal footing. A useful technique is to place oneself in the shoes of another person. How would you feel if the promotions and special events always went to others who fitted in some classical stereotype?
An individual can be ordered to join a group but will he bring their mind with them? Team leaders do not need bodies, they require fully committed individuals who are eager to share their skills and time.
Whenever a group is formed to work together it is not a team, but a gathering of individuals with the ability to form into a team. Therefore, a manager must seek to develop the team by working hardest in the beginning to achieve a high level of effectiveness. It is always much harder to make the changes to a group which has stabilized and established its behavior norms.
Belsheba is a business management expert. She researches and studies on big and small business organizational strategies. Website: Business Management Solutions [http://moneymakingsecret07.blogspot.com] for efficient business operation.
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The concept of hierarchy in any successful organization that operates with more than one employee or personnel requires tact to make it run smoothly. However, as human nature would have it, we don't like taking orders from others and the way some orders are given can seem very demeaning and can create discontentment between superiors and subordinates.
If you've been placed in charge of a team and would like positive results to accomplish your set goals in a timely manner, you may want to consider implementing some or all of these tactics that have worked for successful leaders in the past. They can work for you too.
1. Become Your Subordinate: Put yourself in the other person's place and think about this: If you were that person, what type of information, tools, and resources would you need to successfully perform the requested assignment?
2. Don't Make Idle Promises: Never promise what you may not be able to deliver. You may have plans to attain future resources, monies, positions, etc., but if they are not available at the moment, they may not be obtainable for you to hand out if your plans go awry.
3. Give Clear Directions: Never assume that the other person knows what you're talking about and knows where everything is. Give your subordinates very clear expectations and give them leads and access to resources needed to fulfill your request.
4. Clarify the Benefits: Make it clear that by performing their duties, the benefits to be gained will positively affect both of you. Clarifying the benefits gives them the incentive to want to cooperate with you and work as a team.
5. Remember, You Are a Team: You may be their supervisor and they may be your subordinate, but remember, they are doing the menial tasks or tedious work that you despise or don't have the time to do. They are helping make your job more manageable.
6. Appreciate Their Efforts: Whether they empty your trash or gather that much needed research information for your PowerPoint, remember that they are an integral part of your team and they need some pleasant recognition to keep them motivated.
When team members work as whole in any organization, the results can be astounding and can yield fantastic benefits to all insiders and beyond. So if you're in charge of some team members, you would greatly benefit from implementing these six tactics.
Your subordinates can make you look real good to your superiors, and even if you are the Big Boss, these tactics will surely help your organization run like a well-oiled piece of machinery. They need you, as much as you need them.
Krystalina Soash is a generalist writer and public speaker with one published work, "Writing Tips for Student Projects and New Freelance Writers" and a second work in production: "Your Positive Potential: Action Steps for Self-Empowerment" to be released October 2010.
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Organizations that use coaching as an effective tool and strategy build high performance teams and high results organizations. Perhaps when you think of a "coach" you think of your child's soccer coach, or someone standing on the sidelines shouting, and directing the team.
Coaches have existed off the sports field for a long time but in recent years are more and more in the mainstream. Coaching is now being implemented within organizations worldwide, it provides a new framework for working with staff and developing teams.
Coaching Empowers Staffs, and Creates Collaborative Work Environments
In Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman outlines six emotional leadership styles of which one is coaching. It is also a leadership style that is part of Situational Leadership. In Situational Leadership, coaching is used with staffs that are competent and no longer need a directing style. They have gained competence. Coaching works with both individuals and teams. It focuses on organizational vision and goals, as well as the staffs goals both professionally, and personally.
Managers that use a coaching style, focus on organization goals. Coaches go beyond just the organization and learn more about their staffs, their passions and ideas for the company. When focusing on goals with individuals, and regular coaching meetings, managers are able to move their organizations forward. Regular meetings is one of the real keys to creating a coaching culture. When managers meet with staffs once per year they cannot expect staffs to be focused on the company mission and vision.
Team coaching helps staff members work more effectively together, as a team. Teams are challenging. People dynamics within teams are challenging, and coaching or supervising teams, motivating them is hard. Groups each come with different levels of competence, motivation and inspiration. Some team members are highly committed and loyal to the organization. Some aren't as loyal or committed. That makes the team even more challenging. These differences can cause rifts within the team.
Coaching is an approach to leadership that can clarify staff goals, ideas and expectations. Through coaching both individuals and teams the leader is able to share the organizational vision and hear different ideas and perspectives, coming to shared goals and overall organizational success. Through coaching leaders build staff goal plans that point towards the organizational vision. With a coaching approach, leaders build loyalty for the company but they also build confidence, trust, and many other positive attributes.
By building a coaching culture within the company, leaders are building the capacity for greater and greater levels of success. Coaching assists leaders support staff, empower staff and engage staff. When leaders embrace coaching as their mode of leadership they build their staff up. Whether within the team or individually the strategy has positive effects on the individual and the team.
Donna Price is the President of Compass Rose Consulting, a business coach and consultant working with work teams to work in more effective ways. She provides training, facilitation and coaching to business owners, work teams and managers. Donna is also the Co-Founder of the Real World Leader's Institute with Executive Coach, Debora McLaughlin. Donna has worked in Adventure Education and Facilitation for 10+ years and offers teams opportunities to learn holistically through adventure programs combined with other team building or strategic planning programs. To pick up your Real World Leader's Report visit: http://www.realworldleadersinstitute.com or call 973-948-7673.
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In the last quarter of 1980, I was working at an apartment building called Center Park in south Seattle. Center Park was the first building of its kind built specifically to accommodate the needs of people in wheelchairs who could live independently with some assistance. I and a lady named Virginia were working there as Personal Care Attendants. We worked very closely with two disabled men, John Tyler and Ron Schwarz, both now deceased.
I consider us to have been a loosely knit team of all four individuals. However, we did not perform the tasks that a good team should have done to accomplish our goal of best possible care of our clients. This is what I think we should have done to improve our performance:
Set more goals, as outlined in "The Importance of Goals to the Success of Work Teams" by Greg Hendrix. We simply played it day-by-day when it came to taking care of our clients. We did take trips to Hawaii, San Francisco and Canada which were well planned and executed, but when it came to personal care we just took care of things as they came along. This may have shortened the lives of our clients in the long run. John Tyler was seriously overweight, and we never clearly set a goal of having him lose weight, such as write up a plan or get together as a team to discuss his needs. Ron Schwarz was taking far too many medications for his health, and one in particular seemed to be destroying his central nervous system. Virginia and I should have met with his doctors to discuss this problem and worked out a way to lower his amount of medications taken. We should have set goals for the betterment of his long-term overall health. "The goal of the group creates a vision that focuses their efforts."-Hendrix. The four of us never had a clear vision of what our general purposes were.
Motivated our team, as outlined in "Team Motivation" by Peter Grazier. Virginia and I had no sense of growth or motivation in our jobs, except for the general rewards of caring for the sick and challenged. We held stagnant, dead-end jobs with very little chance for relief even on the weekends. I remember going to a talk by a Canadian lady who had gotten her aides together as a team and rotated them on a schedule, which gave them time off and a chance to go to school and better themselves. Job satisfaction was improved, and the lady was not overly dependent on any one aide. Not so with our "team." Ron was highly dependent on my services. My sole motivation was Ron's care and to work alone with Ron so much taxed me greatly. Virginia had similar problems with John, even though we traded off sometimes and covered for each other. We lacked "a clear purpose, focus or mission" - Grazier - which should have been at the top of our list of how to handle our jobs. We should have discussed burn-out issues with John and Ron, and laid out a plan for hiring more attendants on a revolving schedule so Virginia and I would have had time to go to school and better ourselves.
In summary, there were a lot of things the four of us could have done to improve our working situations, but the two most important ones were to set healthy, realistic goals, and to clearly motivate our paired and interactive teams.
GHOST WRITER, INC. - ghostwriter, copy editor, proofreader, rewriter and book author - and our team of 100+ writing field related workers, many of which are New York Times best selling authors. We have contacts with literary agents, commercial publishers and literary/film field professionals.
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Kid
They are yet to have professional maturity. Mostly people straight out of college/university have this characteristics. They have not yet learnt to take responsibility and least of all accountability. These people will need hand holding and guidance for quite sometime before they can be trusted with any responsibility. It will be difficult for them to grasp the seriousness of the tasks they are involved, unless and until it is instilled into them regularly. Of course not all freshers are like this. This depends a lot of the kind of upbringing and family/friend environment.
Cribber
These people keep cribbing for each and everything starting from schedule, resources available to them to the solution and processes. They will never be satisfied with anything. Some people in this category do an excellent job, cribbing is just a habit. These cribs should just be ignored. By sifting through their cribs, lot of useful information could be obtained.
Silent Doer
These are people who do the tasks quietly without any fanfare. Mostly they do not get due credit for their efforts since they do not project the tasks they have done. But during due course of time, these people will get recognition and will be known for their reliability. They could be trusted with any complex tasks and will work well if stand alone tasks are assigned to them.
Supporter
Supporter cannot be any task by himself/herself. They need work well in supporting role, that is assisting someone else in the team. If you give independent tasks most probably they will not be able to do this by themselves.
Leader
Leader will take charge in any situation and pulls the team along with him/her. Naturally people will look up to this person to guide them. These people will have difficulty in accepting instructions from their superiors. They would like to do things in their way. So it is best to leave them with one or two independent areas of work.
Delegator
Delegator is adept in getting his/her tasks done by other people (typically supporters or silent doers). They are good at projecting themselves to higher management. They can advance in career pretty fast. They could trusted with tasks which are distributed meaning tasks which involves contributions from multiple people.
Summary
Each individual is different and has to be managed with different approach. Emotional Quotient forms a important attribute for the managers to deal with different types of people. The above listed are generic characteristics and is found in each individual in different measures. But one of the characteristics will be dominant.
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Many franchise consultants shy away from such advice as securing master franchises as a plan for expansion with a new franchising company. This is because the legal issues and the litigation are tough to deal with and for that kind of liability there just is not enough money in it. Plus most franchisor later regret giving away that much of he pie or they have one or two master franchise failures which brings down the whole system due to bad PR and litigation costs.
One method considered for our company was to set up regional team partners and use existing franchisees already under the franchise agreement to assist in regional expansion. But we decided to make them managers rather than master franchises, regional franchises, sub-franchisors or partners. It turned out we were right as we made the rapid expansion term of only 2-years to the regional team managers incase they under performed or failed to assist us in opening new units. Several underwhelmed us, yet as a whole the program worked and added many units each year in many different regions.
This is good as the goal of a franchisor is to expand. Below is the list of stipulations I put forth to insure that everyone had a fair chance in the agreement;
Regional team manager understands and acknowledges that the following requirements must be met in order to qualify as the regional team manager:
(A)The regional team manager must, at the time of such assignment, be financially responsible and economically capable of performing our objectives in this Agreement and in our business development plan.
(B) The regional team manager must expressly assume and agree to perform such obligation and sign a binding agreement with us.
(C) The regional team manager must be trained and pass our special regional team manager training course.
(D) The regional team manager must be competent and subject to a thirty (30) to sixty (60) day review by us before assignment as the regional team manager.
(E) The regional team manager must run their own The Company franchise for at least one month prior to assignment as the regional team manager.
(F) The regional team manager must own and run a company store unit for the duration of their franchise in a specifically designated territory other than another franchisee's territory but in their exclusive territory.
(G) The regional team manager must be able to provide all on-going support items to the franchisees listed in the Franchise Agreement.
(H) The regional team manager must attend any formed franchisee organization, union or association meetings in their exclusive territory, which have been officially recognized by us, providing that you want them to be there and of which you are a member.
(I) The regional team manager must maintain on hand at least one area representative and one loaner truck for every twenty (20) franchisees in their exclusive territory.
(J) The regional team manager must sign a non-competition agreement with franchisees not to operate their company store in a franchisee's exclusive territory unless they have been asked to by the franchisee in case of vacation or injury. For this Agreement to be in force the regional team manager must meet all ten (10) of the above requirements.
In addition to the termination provisions in the Franchise Agreement described in Section 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3, regional team manager will be in default of this Agreement and this Agreement will terminate if five (5) or more franchisees transfer or fail in the regional team member's exclusive territory within a twelve (12) month period.
This Agreement will remain in force until Franchisor and the regional team manager mutually agree to terminate this Agreement as long as the regional team manager is in good standing and has not violated their The Company Franchise Agreement in any way. Regional team manager will be in violation of this Agreement if they are sixty (60) days or more in arrears with any monies owed Franchisor.
If a franchisee from the regional team member's exclusive territory contacts The Company with service problems from the regional team manager, The Company will contact the regional team manager to help solve the problem. If The Company has to service the franchisee, the regional team manager will be billed for the service to their franchisee from The Company.
- - - -
Perhaps this might give you your own ideas of how best to rapidly expand your system without getting into the problems of master franchising. Of course I am not a professional parasite attorney so you will have to go pay one $300 per hour to look at such a scenario for you if you think this might be a potential expansion idea for you like it was us and so consider this in 2006.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.
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Effective teams are teams that accomplish their purpose. Here are 10 tips for managers to keep in mind who want their teams (and who doesn't) to be effective. The danger to an organization when teams are not effective is griping, complaining, and avoiding the team meetings because the employees feel it is wasting their time or they are unpleasant to attend.
Here are 10 tips to keep in mind:
Know the individuals' backgrounds so that you are building all the skills, knowledge, and experience needed into the team. You might need some members from other departments or roles in your organization. You may even want to bring some participants from outside your organization. For example, it may be helpful to have a customer or supplier on the team. Look for diversity of thinking styles so that you get multiple viewpoints and approaches. Introduce everyone on the first day even if you think they may know each other. Emphasize why each was requested for the team - or if not based on requests, what you expect them to bring to the total. Explain how the various roles they will play will create the solution or result. It is not that they are all doing the same thing. Think of a baseball team not a rope-pull. Spend time at the first meeting discussing the vision: where you want the team to end up. This is not just a statement made, it is a discussion so all team members buy into the vision, the long-term goal. Next discuss the mission for the group. How will they work together, what will be the process? Answer the questions when, where, how, who and why as applied to the meetings. Develop a strategy, a plan to get the team from where they are now to that end goal. Develop the strategy together so you have complete buy-in. Write out the strategy, the plan, and hang it on the wall or give copies to all team members. This has to be a working plan that gets pulled out at every meeting and becomes dog-eared and changed when and if necessary. Do check-ins and reward progress especially if this is a project that will take weeks or months or longer. Finally, the whole team gets rewarded for good results. An effective team combines their work to produce a higher level of success and celebrates that achievement together.
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Getting your employees to work as a team may seem daunting. When you look at their shortcomings, the poor communication or lack of effectiveness, you may think they can never change. They are good people, but they just don't pull together.
Simple group dynamics tells us that the culture and behaviour of the group comes from the Leader. It is the Owner or Manager who puts the good practices, procedures and positive team culture in place. Changing how you do things will improve the group immediately. Work through the following steps sequentially, and use this as a ladder to getting your employees to work as a Team.
Step 1 Sell your Vision of the Team
Set out your expectations to the team. Gather them round in a Team Huddle, and tell them the type of team you would like us to be. Prepare your thoughts really well, so that you explain yourself clearly and positively. Use positive examples rather than negative, and paint the picture as a logical, but attractive prospect. Most team issues stem from an unclear vision of the type of team we need to be.
Step 2 Clarify your Purpose
Talk through your purpose as a team, and do this frequently. How do you make a profit? What is your purpose with Customers? Who are your Customer groups, and what is your role with each of these groups. Promote your purpose to the team at frequent intervals. Praise them when they are actively working towards that purpose.
Step 3 Identify goals
Identify very clear goals for each week and each month. Those goals should include the day-to-day throughput of work, and also the improvement goals for the week and the month. Make goals precise, with targets and deadlines. It should be possible to write each goal in one relatively short sentence. Encourage goal achievement, and celebrate all successes and milestones. Make a point of noticing good attitudes or behaviours, and praise these. Remember, if you praise something, it will be repeated.
Step 3 Bind the Team
A team is not a team unless they feel cohesive. To foster cohesiveness, one of the most powerful tools is the Team Huddle. This is a five-minute stand-up daily meeting where the Leader focuses and motivates the team for the day. The benefit for team building is that they are all looking at each other, and they can give input to the daily challenges or stressors. Also use social events, for example Pizza Friday, the monthly lunch out, or the celebration dinner. Think in terms of getting the whole team to interact in any way as a team to increase cohesiveness.
Step 4 Engage the Team in Goals, Plans and Strategies
The team is like any other issue in life. Don't just get annoyed at the fact that they are not pulling together. Identify a very clear goal, and plan a strategy to achieve that goal. With a team, it is better if you can identify a clear goal to the team, and ask them to come up with a strategy. Write your goal up on a whiteboard or flipchart. Split the team into two or three sub-groups, and ask each sub-group to come up with a solution. You can then assess the solutions and pick the most appropriate. The team often come up with much better solutions that you would, and it is much more motivational for them to be engaged in this way.
Remember, the path to improving anything in life is to identify a vision of where you are going, and some clear goals to get there.
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In every team based sport, there is a coach. A respected person revered for their intellect of the sport, team dynamics and vast experience. There is no logical reason why a coach should not exist in an organization as well. Teams exist as departments (IT, Finance, Administration, Human Resources) and at times as special projects as well. Over the years, coaching has become an important component of leadership and management within the conventional organization and is no longer the reserve of sporting activities. So what makes coaching so effective and popular with the modern organization?
Coaching - A field that everybody understands
In the context of situational leadership, D. Goleman proposed coaching as one of his 6 emotional leadership styles which leaders may use as behavioral type or as a role.
As a leadership style, coaching can be used when team members are highly motivated and competent with the subject matter but are not aware of the long term strategic goals of the team or organization. Coaching may be used to guides both teams and individuals alike to align their personal goals with that of the organization so that long term strategic objectives may be pursued. It is important that there be no friction brought about by varying levels of commitment of competence within the team; the responsibility of leveling out expectations and reducing friction within the team falls on the coach.
Coaching as a confidence and competence builder
Mentoring team members on a one-to-one basis may boost the individual's confidence and productivity which aims to increase their level of motivation to perform within a team setting. It is the responsibility of the coach to conduct regular feedback to monitor the individual's development; as the individual's performance increases, the coach may reduce their involvement towards professional development by providing less focused tasks for more abstract goals, allowing the individual the ability to work on their own.
The team's excellence depends on how well they have been coached
A good coach, who maintains regular meetings with their team and provides constructive feedback, will instill a habit among their team of constantly assessing weaknesses, strengths and areas where they can improve. An example is in an orchestra where the conductor creates harmony between individual talents but the individual must practice thoroughly on their own as well with assistance from the conductor. Coaching in this sense develops strong commitment to common goals.
Leaders are made and coaching helps you find them
A basis of being titled as a coach stems from the individuals ability to be very well organized, highly competent in their field, an excellent communicator who encourages feedback and a person who has vision and keen insight to develop and nurture up and coming individuals. Through purposive learning the talents of members of a team under the supervision of a dedicated and experienced coach will flourish. It is very likely that when such team members are entrusted with the role of formal leadership, they will be able to repeat the process with other individuals.
Bernard Lajeunesse has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years, you can check out his latest website about coaching at www.coachingmiracle.com which has some great ideas and tips on sports coaching
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If you are a team manager, you will be constantly looking for techniques and strategies that can make your group perform to its maximum potential. A team manager is only as good as their team is, and that is why you should be always involved with your team and make them work to their fullest capacity. But, you must have experienced the limitations. You must have observed that despite there being some good people in your team, you cannot extract good work from them. Why is this happening?
Probably this is because of your own limitations. In most cases, the failings of a team are directly related to the failings of the team leaders that helm them. So, have you looked into your own capabilities of late?
There are several qualities that define a good team manager. The following is a list of the most important ones. If you are looking at being able to maximize the potential of your team, this should act as a checklist for you to work on.
1. How good are you in communicating with your team? Communication can work wonders. When you are a good communicant, you can get your point across better. You can resolve issues, you can provide better clarifications to your team.
2. Do you have a good hold on understanding problems and forwarding solutions? Problem-solving is one of the chief assets of a good team manager. When you are in that leader's position, your subordinates are looking for all the support that you can give. They want to go by the solutions you offer.
3. How good are you at managing people? Managing a team is essentially about managing the interests of a bunch of people. You need to be skilled at personnel management if you are to be a good team leader.
4. Do you work on deadlines? A team manager needs to be a perfectionist when it comes to meeting schedules. Only a team manager who is attentive to time-bound stipulations will be able to make their teams work in a time-bound manner.
5. Team managers should not be power-hungry. This is a totally negative trait. You shouldn't be so arrogant about the power you wield on your subordinates that your attitude becomes detrimental to their productivity.
These five chief characteristics define a good team manager. You have to make sure you work up to them if you don't have these qualities in you already.
If you'd like more information about executive coaching, business transition and group coaching, download your free guide Organizational Transition and Culture Organizational Transition and Culture
Jodi and Mike specialize in executive coaching and business transition with a focus on organizational culture. http://lighthouse-leadership.com
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What is a project?
Let's be clear from the start about what we're talking about. A project is a temporary activity undertaken to create a specific outcome.
'Temporary' means that every project has a definite ending point. In contrast to other ongoing operations or programmes you might be involved in, the project team cannot endlessly rework project outputs and the project will eventually come to an end. Projects may take a few weeks, months or even years to complete. The key, however, is that the project is finite. The outcome of the project, or the 'deliverable', could be a brand new product or service; at least it will result in something new, even if it's simply an enhancement of something that already exists.
A deliverable is a measurable, tangible, verifiable item that must be produced to complete the project. Deliverables can be interim outputs (such as video scripts, architects drawings or training needs analyses) as well as final deliverables associated with these interim outputs (such as the completed video presentation, the finished building, or the final training programme).
When you, as a project manager, accept responsibility for a project, you accept the schedule, timeline, deadlines, resources, and expectations set out at the start. You need to have the details and plans in place to handle whatever arises during a project's duration - setting appropriate expectations for timelines, milestones, and deliverables. And, to ensure success for each and every project you need to have the right team.
Leading a project team
The success of a team and its overall effectiveness is obviously going to be influenced by the quality and skill of the person who leads it. So what makes an effective project team leader?
As with all aspects of management, the styles used by individual managers vary. Managers are individuals and as people will have a tendency to be more task oriented (their main concern is to get the job done) or more people oriented (their main concern is to ensure that people work well together). Effective team management requires a balance between both task and people orientation.
As a project manager you know that your team has been set up to achieve a particular set of deliverables and the team must commit to this goal.
But teams are made up of individuals, each of whom must share the team's common objective but each of whom will also have personal objectives, which they want to satisfy through membership of the team. One team member might want to impress the boss, another might be looking for skills enhancement, and another might want to work with another particular team member. Also teams have the group dimension; they are co dependent or inter-dependent.
The ideal team manager takes all three aspects into account all of the time and achieves balance between them constantly. Realistically, this is difficult to sustain permanently! There will be times when you must hit a milestone so then this takes priority and if you have a good enough relationship with your team they will be prepared to put in the hours until the job is done! At other times, an individual member of the team may need special support and attention or the needs of the group as a whole have to come to the fore. Thus your focus will shift depending on the circumstance but you must never entirely lose sight of the other two aspects.
Top tip
Bear in mind that successful team management relies on the balance between getting the project achieved on time and in budget, and looking after the needs of the team along the way!
I now invite you to visit my website and download a copy of my white paper "Blended Learning - the Way Forward?" and receive a 2010 Survey of Blended Learning http://www.blendedlearningzone.com/index.html to learn more about learning online.
Kate Cobb is Director of blended learning zone. She was commissioned to write "Blended Learning" for the CIPD (UK) L&D Journal in 2008 and is a published author of training books and manuals. She provides a range of services for HR and L&D managers in design and delivery, consultancy and strategic planning of blended learning solutions.
Kate has over 25 years experience as a management training consultant providing F2F training, executive coaching and instructional design services for a wide variety of clients in UK, Europe and the Middle East in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
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Tremendous amounts of research have been done to study team behavior and the reasons behind the success and failure of teams. Judging from the wide range of activities that I have been introduced to as 'teamwork', it is well worth reflecting on the difference between a 'group of persons' and a team. The key to success is complementarity rather than competition. The competition is against time and the goals the team sets as criteria by which to measure its achievement.
In the dust, where we have buried The silent races and their abominations, We have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.
~ D.H. Lawrence
Would you accept management lessons from birds?
The behavior of birds is among the most fascinating in the animal kingdom. Take, for example, their use of teamwork during their long and arduous seasonal migrations. When geese migrate, they fly in a V-shaped formation with the leader at the narrow end of the 'V'. The main burden of boring through the wind is on the leader. The birds in formation behind the leader have to make less effort as they are able to glide in the wake created by the vigorous wing-movements of the leader. However, no one bird can sustain the effort required to head of the flock throughout the journey, so there is a systematic rotation of leadership throughout the long flight of migration. Through this team effort, the geese achieve collectively what no single bird could have done by itself without dying of exhaustion.
Judging from the wide range of activities that I have been introduced to as 'teamwork', it is well worth reflecting on the difference between a 'group of persons' and a team. A group represents a number of persons working in the same company, on the same floor or in the same department; each individual is carrying out his or her own assignment regardless of the activities of the other persons. In contrast, a team shares a common goal, regularly exchanges all relevant information, agrees on a common plan of action and each member contributes in the area of his or her greatest strength. Each member perceives the contribution of the other as necessary and vital towards the completion of the goal. The key to success is complementarity rather than competition. The competition is against time and the goals the team sets as criteria by which to measure its achievement.
Put more bluntly, this means that when advancement is based on factors other than achievements, qualifications and capabilities, there can be no teamwork. This is due to the faulty system which rewards persons for 'WHO' they are and not 'WHAT' they achieve. Aside from that defect caused by the reward management system used in the national and organizational culture, I am fully convinced that we respond to the same laws of human behavior as the rest of humanity. Thus, when the evaluation system is fair and based on a just distribution of rewards dependent on objective and measurable criteria it is possible to build successful teams to the same degree that it is possible in other parts of the world.
Team building has become a fairly scientific endeavor, facilitated by numerous systems, including computer software applications that range from simplistic to sophisticated. As a member of the Team Management Systems International Network and a practitioner using one of the most advanced software tools for the purpose, I am convinced that there are important lessons to be learned from the birds:
- The goal of the team, if kept in focus, drives the team forward with vast amounts of energy.
- When each member of the team is perceived as an able leader in his or her area of expertise, there is no challenge to their presence in the team.
- When the team recognizes that what they can achieve together far outweighs what anyone of them could ever achieve individually a fierce sense of loyalty is built up.
If the birds know that, why shouldn't we?
Fay Niewiadomski founded ICTN (International Consulting & Training Network) in 1993. ICTN provides complete management services to its clients who are among the leading regional and multinational players. Furthermore, she has worked with CEOs, Board Members, Presidents and Ministers of Government and other Leaders to help them meet the challenges of change within their organizations through creative problem solving, management interventions and powerful communication strategies. Prior to founding ICTN, she researched the subject of "Managing Change through Needs-Based Assessment' in large Lebanese Organizations" for her doctoral work at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Additionally, she also held various university positions as a professor at AUB and LAU and as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at NDU.
For additional information on how to improve performance and increase productivity through people, decrease cost and better ensure growth and sustainability, visit http://www.ictn.com.
Discover easy and proven techniques that will help you Guarantee Results by improving your leadership skills. CLICK this link http://www.ictn.com/english/free-articles.aspx?id=7 and receive your Free copy of Management Problems & Solutions.
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Forming an organized and responsive manpower base for your new business may seem like an uphill task, but once you've got a few essentials and 'guidelines' in place, this need not be such an impossible thing after all. The key is to know what you want.
What you need to know: Here's presenting a concise list of what you should ideally be looking to do when it comes to team building:
- Build a team, not a posse: When it comes to realizing your professional goals, make sure you zero in on efficient, hard working people who have the same business aspirations and objectives that you do. Being a team player means you have to accept the shortcomings and quirks of individuals just as you would readily accept their strengths.
Making friends a part of your small business is a great thing, just as long as you are confident of their ability to devote as much time and effort to your 'baby' as you would. Work before play comes to mind here.
- It's all about the "C's": Creativity. Competence. Clarity. Commitment and Communication. There are a bunch of other great adjectives beginning with this letter, and any marketing or business guide will tell you so, but this really is a no brainer. New business, especially when comprising of a small but core team at its center, must be geared by individuals who possess these traits.
No one is asking you to look out for Superman, but if you can gather a bunch of people who seem to possess one or more traits in question here, you are all set.
- Outline your business goals and philosophy: To ensure that everyone is working toward the same (realistic and measurable) target or objective, it is essential that every member of your team is well informed and knowledgeable about your corporate goals because they reflect heavily on the team's purpose. Ensure that each member has a pivotal role to play in the functioning of your enterprise; don't dump all the important work on 4 people in a team of 5, and leave the 5th one chewing his or her pencil while lazily browsing Paris Hilton's blog.
The working relationship within your team must be symbiotic, that is to say, one person's work must complement or support that of another.
- Show some appreciation: Reward, reward, reward. If you don't want people snitching behind your back while you harp on the merits of team work, make sure the people who work hard to help your small business grow are given the merit and recognition they deserve.
This is not to say that you should resort to bribing them though! If you find that a person is not giving a 100%, encourage them and be a friend, clear whatever doubts they may have and help them if they seem to be unclear about a task they have been given. Nevertheless, if this happens all too often, you may have placed your bets on the wrong person.
- Focus on team building exercises: When you are starting out on your project, it would be a good thing to spend some time and effort finalizing some fun activities to 'de-stress' and lighten up the work atmosphere. Take a few hours off your work week to lift the pressure off your team and yourself.
Discuss the possibility of some outdoor games, a barbeque night every weekend, or just plain lounging around and having beer with your 'squad'; they will appreciate this and take to their work more readily than if you were to be more of an ogre than a motivator.
Carrie Langstroth is an Internet Marketing Success Coach. She is a retired CFO in the Corporate Business world so brings strong leadership skills in owning and operating businesses. She coaches and mentors people to empower themselves improving quality of life, personal development and financial position. Learn more about this revolutionary business that can change your life.
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If you own a franchise system and wish to do more and your franchise company is nationwide but relatively small in size; for instance under 200 franchised outlets, you might be able to help your franchisor with expansion. This can provide you with opportunity and could become lucrative for you if you work hard at it.
What is a Regional Team Manager? Well it is a term I made up and a strategy we used in my company to expand in some markets. I was on the franchisor side of the fence but it was always wonderful to have strong franchisees who could assist me in the expansion process. Current team members are safer as they already know the system.
Below is the Regional Team Manager Agreements we used in our company:
The Franchisee of _______________________________ proposes to place franchisees in its exclusive territory, ___________________________________ on behalf of The Company for this service the regional team manager will receive 40% of the collected franchise fee for each new franchisee in their exclusive territory.
The Company of _______________________________ will be allowed to represent The Company and The Detail Guys Systems. The Company
agrees to give the regional team manager first right of refusal on any new franchising concept that The Company franchises in the future as long as the regional team manager is in good standing with The Company
In addition to this Agreement, the regional team manager will be bound by the terms of the The Company Uniform Franchise Offering Circular and the Franchise Agreement that is in place for existing franchisees as well as any future Uniform Franchise Offering Circular and Franchise Agreements that Franchisor registers.
Regional team manager agrees to operate in good standing a The Company franchise in their exclusive territory for the life of this Agreement.
Regional team manager agrees to protect the Marks, the System of doing business, the proprietary and confidential information including the Confidential Operations Manual and to comply with the provisions of The Company Uniform Franchise Offering Circular and the Franchise Agreement as described under the heading "Covenants Not To Compete".
Regional team manager shall furnish Franchisor with its articles or certificates of incorporation, organization or formation of such corporation or company, the by laws, other governing documents and any other documents Franchisor may reasonably request and any amendments thereto.
Regional team manager shall maintain provisions enforceable under applicable law restricting the issuance and transfer of capital stock, membership interests or securities of the corporation or company and each share certificate shall at all times have onspicuously endorsed upon its face a statement in a form satisfactory to Franchisor that it is held subject to the restrictive provisions of the The Company Uniform Franchise Offering Circular and the Franchise Agreement.
Regional team manager understands and acknowledges that this Agreement cannot be sold, assigned, transferred, coveyed, subleased or encumbered in any way without the prior written consent of Franchisor. Regional team manager further understands and acknowledges that this Agreement terminates at the termination, whether voluntary or involuntary, of the regional team manager's original The Company Franchise Agreement or upon the relocation of the regional team manager to a residence outside their exclusive territory as stated above.
There were other stipulations as well, but that is the jist of it and since every franchise does things a little differently your agreement that you work out with your franchisor, that is if they are interested would indeed be a little different. Perhaps this will give you some ideas to consider so think on this in 2006.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.
Learn more about "Team Management" from these great articles on [BMOI]
It is always a good idea to work with a team. You get to discuss your views with the rest of the team members and talk about some improvements to make your company excel over others. You also learn more about how to handle certain situations with the guidance of other people. This very same rule applies in the real estate industry.
It cannot be denied though that some problems may arise when you deal with other real estate agents. There are instances when others may show low performance levels. If you are the boss, you also want some respect from your subordinates. When you think there are issues to handle, learn to address everything with professionalism.
How will you handle your brokers?
Team management ignites the people person in you. This means that you are there to listen to everybody to see through the real core of the problem. Do not just assume and accuse one of doing this or that if you do not have the basis for doing so. Handling issues between real estate agents should be done as follows:
Do not ignore the issue. No matter how small or big the issue is, you must always deal with it. Ignoring the problem will only allow the culprits to presume that you do not have the strength to face them. This will result to an aggravated situation. Even those who respect you may no longer give what is due to you as a boss.
Setting double standards is a no-no. You may always have the heart for your top performers. This means that you may forgo of the punishment when these individuals are concerned. Well, you should never act that way or the rest of your brokers will get demoralized.
Use approaches depending on that person's attitude. Sometimes, you fail to see trough the real core of the problem because you use judgment that you used in the past. This means that you want to impose the same rules and apply the same punishments to all brokers in your team. Well, the truth is if there are different personalities in the workplace, punishments should be given depending on the attitude of that person.
Do not respond on the basis of intuition. Superficial judgment will only cause more problems. If you want to resolve issues on low real estate property sales, you must see what causes that person not to perform the same way as the other real estate agents. There might be personal concerns that lead to poor performance.
Get rid of the person if necessary. When worse comes to worst and an individual causes problems in the workplace every now and then, you have no choice but to terminate his services. Make sure that you will not do these things on the basis of hearsay though.
If you want to achieve higher sales productivity for your real estate company, you must always resolve issues that happen in the work place. Do not delay settlement of these concerns. Even if you are the boss, take time out to listen.
Beverly Manago is a freelance writer focused on the real estate industry. She is also a consultant for My Real Estate Virtual Tour, a web 2.0 marketing tool that lets real estate agents create stunning virtual tours and single property sites easily, with a free version available for listing presentations. She also contributes to the Virtual Tour Blog there.
Learn more about "Team Management" from these great articles on [BMOI]
There is the entire world of difference between making a team function as opposed to leading it. As a sales manager if you want a great and high performing team you will need to master both.
If numbers were all that mattered, making a team of people function is something that even a computer program can do. If people meet certain numeric productivity metrics, then they get certain rewards. If they don't pass certain standards, then they are punished according to certain procedures.
Unfortunately many new sales managers initially think in this fashion, reducing their people to numbers. This ultimately leads to a team's downfall. With a corresponding dip in sales.
Just like the members of their team, a leader is a person too - but he or she sets the standards by which the rest of the team operates. A leader is someone that people are happy and proud to follow. Here are some tips to help you become a leader, not just a number crunching manager.
Take Part
A leader doesn't dictate to his team. He spearheads the actions that the team takes. If you simply tell people what you want done then odds are they'll eventually wind up thinking "so what are YOU going to be doing?"
Always take initiative and let your people see that you're doing your share of the work to make their work flow smoother. Every time you've got an idea or a new goal make sure that they see you at the forefront clearing the way for them. This makes them know that you're not just ordering them around then sitting back and resting on your laurels while they do the dirty work.
Granted, some people would say that a smart general never stays on the front lines. While this war analogy is true, on the other hand no true soldier would follow a bureaucratic pencil pusher whose never held a gun in his life either.
Establish Your Authority
An effective leader makes sure that his authority and right to lead is not in question. People have certain standards in regards to qualities that they would like to see in the people leading them. Ascertain and meet those qualities as closely as you can for your team members.
If they value competency and efficiency, work on those traits. If they want empathy and compassion, work on those. Image is everything. Most people usually go to either of two errant extremes; either they become (one of the boys) in an attempt to make their team feel comfortable, or they remain aloof and distant so as to keep their team on their toes. Neither one makes a person seem like an authority figure. Strike a balance between the two.
Be an Example to Follow
Think of all the traits you want in a "perfect" employee. Then follow it yourself. If you want your people to never be late or absent, then don't be slack yourself. If you expect them to be quick witted and hard working, and then make sure that you put in your fair share of brains and effort too.
Whatever the things you expect of them, demand no less from yourself. People can never respect someone who demands of other people what he or she is unwilling or unable to do. As a matter of fact, you should perform beyond what you expect of them, since you'll be setting the benchmark for your team.
Encourage Symbiosis and Synergy
Lastly, there are two key traits a leader instills in the people under him or her. Symbiosis, in nature, means two entities existing to each other's mutual benefit. Likewise, make sure that your team has a symbiotic relationship with you. Do right by them, and let them do right by you.
Synergy, on the other hand, is a trait where the different components that make an entity up will all interact in harmony with each other. This is how it should be with a good team. Everyone should have a role to play within the team that complements the moves and actions of the other members.
This makes everyone on the team feel valued, and at the same time thankful to be working with the rest of the team and under your leadership.
Denise Oyston is an industry thought leader for sales managers. Check out her blog at http://www.ManagingSalesPeople.com With over 25 years experience in sales and three national awards to her credit she is passionate about helping sales managers succeed in the new business economy. For practical help and advice sign up for her free E course at http://www.NewManagerSecrets.com
