Other Things You Need to Know About Managing People

Hi everyone, hope you’re looking forward to a great week! Last time, I talked about the steps you need to take to become a Team Leader. On the way, there are a number of things you need to get comfortable with. Once your manager feels you’re ready to progress, they’ll be able to help you along. Some of the key considerations are:

1.       Having difficult conversations. This can range from saying ‘no’ to a holiday request to giving someone a final warning regarding their conduct which will lead to them being fired if no improvement and then firing them. If you’re not 100% comfortable doing this and everything in between, you may not be cut out to manage people and that’s fine – there are plenty of other ways to progress and you may feel more ready later on.

2.       Dealing with difficult customers in Customer Service environments – if you allow the kind of unreasonable customer who tries to get the better of you on the phone when they’re in the wrong or threatens to get you fired for doing your job correctly to ruin your day you may not be best suited to this kind of role. Again, that’s perfectly okay.

3.       Being able to interpret and act on Management Information (MI). As a Team Leader, a big part of your job is dealing with facts and figures that show how your team is doing. You’ll need to identify what areas need improvement, report this (sometimes) to your manager and take action (potentially involving difficult conversations). An example of this is a colleague who is often late. Before taking any action against them, you’ll need to gather evidence of the lateness.

4.       Dealing with different stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by whatever you’re working on. As a Team Leader, you may be asked to work on projects where you’ll need to think more deeply about the impact of what you’re doing and draw on the knowledge of experts from other departments. It’s essential to deal with all kinds of people (who will be senior to you in many cases) to ensure a successful outcome.

I hope this gives a more detailed idea of the skills you’ll need to progress. To ensure you don’t miss out, be sure to press the ‘Subscribe’ button or enter your email address on the left side of the page and press ‘Get Email Notification’. Thanks for reading and see you next time!