Even the most well-constructed teams can have difficulties. Teams that have worked together in the past might have issues currently, or may have lost their motivation doing certain tasks. As a manager, it’s your job to help everyone get back on track and feel like what they are doing is productive. Technology and new managerial skills have made it easy to get people back on track and interested in their jobs—all it takes is knowing the right way to use them.
Here are some ways you can help your team find their groove again.
Listen to your employees
One of the main problems you can face as a manager is being out of touch with your employees. Many times when workers feel scattered, it tends to be because they aren’t receiving the direction they need from management. You’ll want to sit down with each of your employees and have them express their concerns and which challenges they are facing currently. Getting an idea of how each individual is feeling can give you a better idea of how to move forward and re-establish morale.
Encourage teamwork
Employees can often feel as though they are working within separate bubbles. The truth is that teamwork can solve many problems that your workers are facing. Sitting down the entire team together and encouraging them to use each other as resources can help them to feel as though they aren’t working within a vacuum. Most likely, you put together a team that you felt would work well with one another and that you could see succeeding. Make sure that your team members know that they should all be there for each other.
Encourage communication
When information gets lost, it can make working together all the more complicated and frustrating. You should make sure that no matter what happens, your team has a solid way to contact you when they have any questions or need help developing some ideas for the company. You’ll want to make sure that you have a presence on several social media channels. You might also want to implement some tools like Slack polls and emojis to make the process more enjoyable overall. It’s one way to bring a scattered team back to focusing on the problems at hand establish what exactly you need to do in order to succeed.
Set clear goals
Confusion can be one of the main things that draw teams apart. Many times this happens because team leaders don’t have an idea of what they want to accomplish. It’s important for managers to be able to have a set of tasks available for those who ask for them. This can mean finding applications that help with the process or sitting down and having a meeting in person in order to organize everything properly. Your team should know what exactly it is that they are working toward and how they can bring the rest of your team together in order to finish your goals and move on to bigger and better things.
Having a scattered team can be a difficult part of being a manager, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of your business or any important campaigns. All it usually takes is rallying everyone so they get back on track—and you can develop new plans for the future.
Guest article written by: Alex Schnee