8 Proven Tips for Managing a Small Team Successfully
While managing a small team has advantages such as flexibility or cost reduction, it also brings its challenges. The main risks in managing small teams are; the risk of a bad hire, disorganization, burn-out, and lack of priorities. Whether you find yourself leading a small team at school or work, the success of that team relies largely on how good of a leader you are. Managing a team, no matter how small, is not a walk in the park. It could get tricky and borderline frustrating. But the good part is that with a few proven tips and strategies for handling such teams, the burden should be made lighter.
In this article, we’ll be showing you some proven tips for managing a small team successfully and ensuring all the goals are achieved. This is for all team leads and department heads, whether in business or at school.
1. Define and Communicate a Simple Objective
The purpose of setting up a team in the first place is to achieve a certain goal. It might be to handle a small task in a larger project, make a presentation, and so on. Not having a clear objective for creating the team from the very onset will negatively affect the success of the team. So, the reasonable thing to do is to define a simple objective and make sure it is clear and understood by all. An objective sets a course, allows you to define a strategy with your own manager or with the manager of the company, and above all to keep a clear line with your team.
There is nothing as frustrating and destabilizing for a team than to have a leader who shuffles between objectives, declaring one thing one day and switching it up the next. To maintain consistency in your actions, it is important to clarify your objectives from the start and make sure every member of your team understands and accepts it.
2. Carefully Select Your Team Members
Being the leader of a team sometimes gives you the leverage to decide who you want to be on your team. In doing that, you must be ready to carefully select members with skills that would be beneficial to the objectives of the team. Members of a small team should be able to multi-task and not need precise instructions all the time. Also, they must be flexible and independent.
If you get to do an interview, take your time to identify the most suitable profiles for your team. For example, you can ask the candidate to complete a small test before hiring him. The most important thing is not so much the result achieved as the candidate’s reaction to this type of request and his willingness to participate.
3. Have an Action Plan for the Whole Team
While defining the objective is great and all, narrowing it down to action plans will ensure greater productivity. An action plan is a detailed outlining of all the steps and tasks that are needed to achieve a certain objective. In order not to get lost in all the actions to be carried out by the team during the year, it is important to have an action plan that details all the actions to be carried out by the team over a period, including deadlines, and also dividing up the “who does what.” It will be a question of following it as soon as possible, but above all of updating it very regularly, according to constraints, delays, unforeseen events, and the workloads of each team member.
4. Create a Dashboard
A dashboard is a graphical representation of the key performance indicators that are relevant to a particular objective. From a single point of access, the dashboard can be used as a tool to manage all the business information of a team. Now, you must create this dashboard so you can redirect your actions as you go. How would you know if your team is progressing well if you don’t even know where you are as a team? While creating this dashboard, you must create a complete one. Build a dashboard that includes the data to be monitored and the interventions and actions of the team. Above all, ensure it is complete and regularly updated, by you or by the members of the team.
5. Distribute the Workload Fairly
It is important to distribute the workloads so as not to injure or overburden anyone. You must understand that every team member brings something unique to the table in terms of skills, qualifications, and previous engagements. No two team members will ever experience loads, emergencies, and priorities the same. It is important to distribute the work fairly and to rebalance regularly. For example, it will be interesting to watch, control, and follow everyone’s progress every week and to rebalance during the week according to everyone’s progress. You will also have to estimate the working time of each action so that some find themselves working the light tasks while others are overloaded and on the verge of exhaustion.
Also, to ensure that a project becomes successful, project managers must always keep their eyes on the big picture, dedicating enough time and research to effective delegation. But delegation isn’t just about giving a task to someone else and crossing it off your to-do list. In fact, although it is no longer on your to-do list, as a manager, it remains your responsibility. At the end of the day, the task should be completed as scheduled, and it’s your job to make sure whoever you assigned it to works on it as scheduled.
6. Have Regular Team Meetings
To spread the workloads, to follow the progress of each one, to remove doubts or misunderstandings, and to plan the execution of pending tasks, you must plan meetings regularly, for example, once a week. Meetings allow you to recall the objectives, distribute and plan tasks, remove doubts, and resolve conflicts. It will also be an opportunity for everyone to ask questions, readjust their tasks, and talk about their fears. You will also be able to understand your team members better, hence, easily manage conflicts. A rule of thumb is to resist the urge to cancel follow-up meetings. By postponing group or individual meetings, you risk letting your team drift in the wrong direction.
7. Encourage Rest
The workload of a small team could get heavy sometimes. There is always work to be done and sometimes, you might forget to stop. However, your team’s lack of rest has negative consequences for your business. Tired people are less productive, less creative, and get sick more easily. The risk of burnout is also more frequent in small teams. Instead of just telling your team members to get enough rest, one tip is to lead by example. Don’t leave work too late, take breaks and vacations regularly, and as you do this, insist that your team do the same.
8. Don’t Stop Communicating
To move a project forward, all relevant information should be disseminated. It’s a way for people to trust you. Also, you don’t want anyone on your team, especially those who have been assigned essential tasks, to operate on incomplete information. Having a complete set of collaboration tools is essential for effective information exchange within your small team and workarounds within a single workspace. Technologies are constantly evolving and as such, there are a lot of collaboration tools that can help foster better communication of the team’s progress between you and the team members.
While small teams face different challenges, they also have many advantages. They often develop a strong team spirit, solidarity, and pride in working towards a common goal of developing an organization. With these few proven strategies for managing a small team successfully, your team has no other choice but to smash those goals.
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