How to manage a team of “Human beings”

January 26, 2008 at 6:55 pm · Filed under 746, Management and tagged: employees, Management, problems, solutions, Team building

Its normal in every workplace where u will have to manage a team . And if u want to manage some “psyche” guys like me .. its even more big headache [ You can ask my managers for that 🙂 But ya me pretty fortunate to have pretty good managers ]. Here are list of activites that helps you to manage the team .

1)Avoid subgroups being formed  :

First and foremost avoid groups within the team . How can one avoid this . The answer is “games” . Games does not mean you go to resort and play .. Again here one sub group plays against another subgroup .So you are just encouraging the sub groups …. You should choose the game which has following property

1> Game should dynamically choose few people .. N this group should conspire against the rest : 

For each game group is generated randomly . Since this group needs to conspire against the rest , they need to interact and come with a strategy . So there is very high level of interaction among group members . And since for every game the group is randomly picked .. every memebr would have had interacted closely with every other member !! SO a unity is brought in .

2>It should allow open accusations but rational 

This will provide the “what othere know about u ” in Juharis quadrilateral for everyone

One such intresting game is ” The God” game [ Roshin introduced this to me on a trek ] . I think it is alos called as “secret wolves” game  .

2) Provide Attention and cheer simple accomplishments

It may seem silly , but these are the simplest things what ur employees look for from manager . Cheering does not mean manage goes n “smile” and shake hands … Cheering should come from “heart” . You need to be informal as much as possible …. Just like all of a sudden manager stand on his cubicle and starts announcing “So n so Has done this ” energetically has a better impact than giving away 15k cash .

3) Form some team lingo

Create a certain lingo .. for eg .. say in ur team Alpha means serious .. Now someone tells a joke .. U can ask “Alpha??” .. Believe me such lingo unites people .

4) Have SSC session among the people in management 

If u find a sign of frustration in team , call up a meeting of members . Instead of asking “What went wrong n what did not ” [ The inherent defect is the management only tries to identify the problems from lower levels but does not care to check if they have a solution in mind . I just dont understan why these management folks think only they have the solutions] .. A better way is create three columns namely “stop” , “start” and “continue” . Now ask each member to walk to board and fill them .. By this method u get not only list of problems but solutions and the expectations of employees

I ll update when i come up with more stratergies …

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