The Role of a Manager: #2 Develop My Team
Developing your team is a primary responsibility of a manager. The key word here is develop. To develop means to cause something to grow so it becomes more advanced or mature. Your role as manager is to create a culture and management system that helps the people on your team, and your team as a whole, grow so they become more advanced and reach their full potential under your care.
Developing your team starts by building a foundation on clarity and trust. Clarity and trust are the two components your teams needs from you in order to operate and execute to deliver your business results. Without clarity and trust, your team will experience noise, chaos, drama, inefficiency and you will struggle as a manager to drive the results you are accountable for.
So, what does it look like for a manager to develop their team? Here are (5) areas to lean into to that will help you develop your team. I will unpack these further in future content, but here is a teaser on where you can focus as you develop your team.
1. Set expectations — Developing your team starts with setting clear expectations. People on your team need to understand where you are going, how you will get there and how they will be measured along the way. Frustration and dysfunction start to creep in when expectations are not set and clear.
2. Skill Development — This includes both hard job skills and emotional intelligence skills. Developing your team means assessing and supporting skill development that will allow your team to excel in doing their job today and equip them with skills that will help them excel as they progress on their career journey.
3. Career Planning — Engage people on your team to understand their career aspirations and how you can come alongside them and support them. As a manager, you have a unique perspective and insight that can help people on your team as they progress in their career. It starts by engaging and starting the conversation and then defining what action can you take to support their development along the way.
4. Give Effective Feedback — As Kim Scott says in Radical Candor, care personally and challenge directly when giving feedback. Feedback is a powerful tool for a manager and will help facilitate your role in the development process. Feedback should be specific and frequent. It should also be bi-directional. Feedback should include both the positive and constructive aspects and be part of an ongoing conversation you have with your team. No surprises.
5. Objectives, Key Results and Goal-Setting — Whichever model or tool you use to engage your team in goal-setting, this is a great way to drive the development of your team. This provide clarity, alignment, direction, areas where support is needed and can be used to help stretch the people on your team to go further, faster.
Here is access to our YouTube playlist discussing the (3) focus areas of a manager. Check these out for additional insights — Playlist Link
