- Give time to your team
- 1-1’s, development reviews, PDR’s, working together on projects, or just time for a coffee and a chat. Whatever you call it, it’s important to regularly spend time with each of the team members. Rarely, if ever, will you find that one of these sessions wasn’t worthwhile. Just don’t rush it.
- Make sure everyone has a role.
- Every single member of your team is important, and everyone needs to feel that their efforts are worthwhile, whether it’s setting up new servers, systems, and infrastructure, or manning the telephones and taking calls. Nobody likes to feel like the spare wheel, and it’s unproductive, but it can easily happen.
- Take them with you.
- Going to a conference, seminar, networking event or similar? Take one of the team with you, and prioritise the junior members. It’s a great learning experience for them, and a good bonding exercise for the both of you. You don’t need to do this every time, but depending on the size of the team, it should at least be possible to do this once a year per team member.
- Put the team first.
- Your team get things done. Without them, you’re nothing. Put them first, and make sure they know you’re fighting their corner. Even if it means you taking the hit for something, or to the detriment of your reputation in the business, ultimately if your team see you working hard for them, they’ll work hard for you. In the long run, this is what matters more.
- Be a good role model
- Demonstrate a good work / life balance. This isn’t easy, and particularly in IT, where the servers don’t sleep just because you do, but if you can show that you work when you need to, and relax when you can by making the most of your free time, it’ll set an example that will help prevent burn-out and make for a more productive, enjoyable work environment.
- Don’t be late. Set standards that the rest of the team can abide by. Get to work on time, be prompt for meetings. Don’t be a “Do as I say, not as I do” boss.
- Be tidy. If you want your team to keep a tidy workspace, it’s going to be a lot easier if you set a good example.
- Put in the extra hours when you need to, but make sure you take those holidays that you earn. Don’t make your team feel guilty if they ask for time off.
- Customer service – put the customer first. In internal IT departments, the customer is the end-user, and the old stereotype of IT helpdesk staff disliking end users still holds true in many cases. Make sure your team know that while half of their job is technical, in some ways the most important half is good old customer service. Set an example by providing excellent service to your customers.
- Respect your colleagues – set a good example by not complaining about your colleagues in the business. Even if you’ve been terribly disappointed or let down by one of your peers, don’t pass that down to your team. It’s demotivating for them to hear, and can damage relationships between departments and teams. Be open, but not negative.
- Enjoy your job and be positive! If you don’t enjoy what you do, it’ll be clear to your team, but if you enjoy what you do, that positivity will spread.
- Ask for feedback
- Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from your team. This can be intimidating, especially in person, but it’s absolutely invaluable. Asking “is there anything I could be doing that I’m currently not doing?” or “What could I be doing better?” will provide you with superb information to help you develop and improve as a manager, and help to identify any issues that could be hindering the team’s productivity. If the answer to both of these questions is “nothing”, then well done – however make sure you ask it regularly and phrase it differently each time to tease out any issues.
- Keep up to date.
- Ask for regular updates on performance, tasks, challenges, difficulties and successes. Whether you do this via email, phone, in person, or some other way will depend on your particular circumstances. Personally, I like the “15/five” style of weekly report via email, meaning it should take them 15 minutes to write, and you 5 minutes to read, but use whatever works for you.
- Focus on development.
- IT careers are all about what you know, and what experience you have. If you let your staff development fall behind, not only will they become less productive, but they’ll be thinking about moving on to somewhere else to continue to learn and develop their skills and knowledge.
- Engender a culture of learning and knowledge sharing. In our team, we share “discoveries” every Friday via group emails, demonstrating what we’ve learned or discovered that week, from how to create a new maintenance task in SQL Server, what the new features of the iPhone 6 will be, or even facts about dinosaurs, particle accelerators, or IT industry figures…
- Follow through on what you say.
- This should go without saying, but you see it all the time. If you say you’ll do something, do it. Or, if it turns out that you can’t, don’t have time, or the situation changes, inform your team and explain why.
- Be the best that you can be.
- No pressure, right? Always strive to be as good as you can possibly be. Don’t burn yourself out, but be constantly looking for ways to improve yourself, the team, the environment, your business and your role. Be awesome.
Have I missed anything? I’m sure I have, so let me know by commenting.
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