Little Important Learning from Managing Small Teams to Larger Ones

Given below are some of the important learning’s from my experience of growing the team of 5 people to 250+ team now and every growing still  

• Teamwork
• Art of Delegation
• Show Appreciation
• Take Hard decisions for Organization Benefit
• Effective communication

There are many more, but sticking to above ones, which I personally feel are the most important ingredients for managing a larger team

• Team Work  

 “T- together  E-Everyone  A-Achieves  M – More”.  To get the Best out of your team, you should always focus on team member’s strength and utilize them, instead of focusing on their weakness. When you work in team, you get diverse ideas and perspective, which often leads to creative solutions. While working in team, you also gets uncover answers that might not have occurred otherwise. Team encourages each other for task completion that works as a miracle. Teamwork makes everybody perform well and produce great results. With teamwork, individual risk taking capacity also increases along with ownership towards organization common goals. As the bigger tasks are being divided into smaller tasks, they are more manageable and give a sense of accomplishment to all individuals involved.

• Art of Delegation –

This is actually tough but highly essential, especially if you are moving ahead. You cannot have control of everything. To achieve BIGGER goals, you have to loose the sight of horizons. We all have confidence on our capabilities and hence we assume that we can only do piece of job much faster than him/her. But we all need to understand that its ONLY short term thinking. Following are the six steps for delegation, which yields great results:

1. Prepare – be clear on what you are expecting from the person. Take time to think
2.  Assign – hand over all the responsibilities with timing and budget to the person. Provide the tips/assistance, if required. Set your expectations clearly and be open to his/her questions
3. Confirm understanding – this is highly critical as while delegating we assume that other person understands what we mean.  Confirming the understanding will determine the success and failure of delegation.
4. Commitment – this is generally skipped by all of us. We all assume that other person has accepted the task. For successful handing over, commitment is very important.
5. Avoid Interruptions – Since we knew the subject much better than the other person, we tend to keep interrupting assuming we are assisting them. Think Over it! This could be annoying as well. Also, taking tasks back is a strict No-No
6. Accountability – Communication in delegation is the key. Therefore, reporting on progress is essential to be sure that work is moving in right direction.

• Show Appreciation 

This in a way motivates your people to give outstanding results.  We should never loose any chance to appreciate your people. This also tells your people, how much you care and value them.  Show appreciation for their hard work and contributions to organizations goals.  We should also provide opportunities for our people, where they can show their hidden talent. Employee recognition is important, to boost up his self-confidence. Appreciation makes people feel important and appreciated.  It is something we should not hide. So appreciation works best, when it is done in public. An effective leadership, people accomplish and achieve more than they may ever have dreamed possible.

• Take Hard Decisions for Organization Benefit

This is another important thing learnt. At times, maybe we personally do not agree to the decision but when it comes to bigger picture we need to take those tough calls.  Decision is right or wrong, that time will tell, but when situation comes, someone has to take the decision and usually its YOU.  Though, its good to weigh the pros and cons of all your decision but that should not delay the decisions. At times, decision are not well understood by your team, but believe me, your horizon is far much larger than your team, so believe in yourself. While taking decisions, follow your instinct. It will never misguide you.

• Effective communication

There are 3 ways on how we communicate i.e Oral, Written and Non-verbal. All three are important while communicating with your juniors in team or with your seniors.  To communicate effectively, we should also learn to listen. Hearing and Listening are two separate things. While communicating, try not to be judgmental or biased with our own beliefs. 

To conclude, I’m still practicing the above learning to the best of my capability, as the team is continuously growing from large to larger. Everyday is a new day and each day comes up with new challenges.