The role of the Team Leader can be crucial to making the day run well and keeping the show on the road. It’s also a potential source of confusion, frustration and can actually be an inhibitor to delivery if it’s not understood.
Team Leaders can also be known as Supervisors, Seniors and Coordinators. Some organisations use this title for their first layer of management also, which can add to the fun. So here’s how we distinguish between the Team Leader and the Manager: Read more…
When personality tests and cultural surveys come up with clients, they often say a little apologetically “I know you don’t think much of these, but…”. I feel bad when I hear this, because I don’t automatically think they are bad.
Far from it.
I rate things such as Myers-Briggs, the various LSI, OCI, CSI permutations, Facet 5 and all various letters, spiderwebs and colours as great tools for raising the performance of teams that already know what they’re doing. Read more…
Organisations often need a watchdog role. I know we shouldn’t call it that, we should at least say ‘ensure quality’ or ‘alignment’. But what we are trying to achieve is to make sure that a group of people provide the services or do the work as required.
One particular role comes to mind where this function appears – Manager of Strategy. This role is often expected to ensure that plans and outputs across the business align with the agreed organisational strategy. Read more…
Managing can be a schizophrenic job – you need to set clear expectations for your people, and if they are unable to reach these expectations after due attempts to help them, you need to remove them from the role. But at the same time, if you need to remove someone from the role, the person who has failed in helping them reach those same expectations is….you!
In other words, if you do your job right, you might have to sack someone. And if you do your job right, you might not have to sack someone. Read more…