Managing Different Types of People - Team Management

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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.

Latha C
latha.c@nsn.com

Franchising with Regional Team Managers and Partners

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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.

10 Tips For Effective Team Management

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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.

Hazel Wagner, PhD, MBA, CMC

Author, Speaker, Consultant, Entrepreneur
Certified/Qualified in DISC, HBDI, Mindex, MBTI Myers-Briggs
http://www.hazelwagner.com

Author of Power Brainstorming:Great ideas at Lightning Speed

Find more ways to speed up your idea generation at:
http://www.brainstorming-that-works.com

Team Management - Getting Your Employees to Work As a Team

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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.

Kate Tammemagi designs training in Managing People and provides all types of Manager Training.

Coaching, an Essential Component of Team Management

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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

Tips For Team Managers - How to Maximize Production

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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

How to Be a Successful Project Team Manager

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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.