How to manage your work team: guidelines and tips for success

One of the greatest difficulties that we encounter in our professional career (and also in personal or sports, or with some type of project) is to learn to manage the talent of a team.

When we work as a team, everything becomes more complex, but when you have to be the one who leads that team, manages its talents and has the main responsibility, everything becomes even more complicated. The great key to achieving this is for us to understand that this development does not depend on authority or magical rules... but in your own personal development and in key psychological skills.

How to manage a work team?

A team can be at work, in an undertaking, in some kind of competition, or even in your family (a family is a team mode, since its members have or should have goals common). When we get to that situation we find ourselves with great doubts, since nobody has taught us to do it. We feel fear, insecurity, difficulty to communicate, to know how to say no, to motivate them, and We feel that each member of the team follows a free path and finally those common goals are not comply. What are the key skills that lead you to achieve it?

Professional development is really personal development. To grow as a professional (a fundamental motivation in life, since through work a service is done to the world in which you live) it is necessary to grow as a person. The key personal skills that help you improve as a professional are emotion management (which influences every decision you make and your mood), your productivity (the way in which you motivate yourself, motivate yourself, manage time and resources), your communication (if it is assertive, transparent and empathetic enough) and above all personal relationships. This is where a key personal and psychological skill comes in: authentic leadership.

In the last 10 years I have accompanied professionals as a psychologist and coach in their personal change processes to learn how to manage their teams at empoderamientohumano.com. To help you, the first step is to register for free at Empower yourself (key personal skills development program for professional development).

The most important key is to trust

The leadership it is often misinterpreted as a position of guidance, command or power. Nothing is further from reality. Leadership is actually the ability to positively influence others. This is something necessary in a work or sports team, in a project, as teachers, educators, and also as parents. A leader is a person who takes responsibility for the team, trusts the people of that team and knows how to accompany them in their growth. A leader, first of all, creates other leaders (knowledge is not kept).

The great key to managing your work team, then, is trust. When the team does not achieve the expected results or achieves them with too much effort and stress, it is because there is not enough cohesion and harmony among the members of that team. This is caused by a lack of trust with the person who must manage the talent of that team (overconfidence is also a form of distrust).

Cohesion, motivation and empathy

When people trust that person, unity, cohesion, they are consulted, and at the same time, that leader supervises and delegates them (but without hyper vigilance). Instead of building a formal authority, based on blind obedience, builds a moral authority, based on trust. When you trust and trust you (which implies a whole process of change), the relationship with the team becomes more close, they come to you, they look to you for your advice or help, and that helps you to unite the team and achieve the objectives proposed.

Another essential skill is empathic communication and assertive. The leader knows how to transmit what is necessary, with kindness, empathy, trust, closeness, genuine interest in the other and their needs, but also by establishing clear limits. This is actually an emotional process, where the way you manage your emotions is at stake (fear of the other's response, insecurity, mistrust, etc.).

Finally: learn to manage your emotions. This process of change implies that you must learn to manage your emotions in a more functional way, so that accompany you in that process through trust, security and hope instead of fear, stress, the anxiety, anger or insecurity.

Making others grow is helping you grow. It is one of the most edifying change processes in both professional and personal life.