Managing a Team

To be a successful manager, you need to, motivate your team to excel.

Teams are the cornerstones of most public and nonprofit organizations. successful team leaders understand what makes a team effective and what can lead to failure. To be a successful manager, you need to be able to plan and design the work of your team, delegate tasks effectively, monitor progress, and motivate your team to excel.

Planning is a key skill for any manger and starts with having a good understanding of the organization's objectives. It involves establishing a strategy for achieving those goals using the personnel available, and developing the means to integrate and coordinate necessary activities.

Planning is concerned with ends (what needs to be done) and means (how those ends are to be achieved). In order to create a plan, managers must first identify the organization's goals--what it is trying to achieve. Goals are the foundation of all other planning activities. They refer to the desired outcomes for the entire organization, for groups and teams within the organization, and for individuals. Goals provide the direction for all management decisions and form the criteria against which actual accomplishments can be measured.

ACTION POINT: Set goals and plan for achieving them.