Develop your team - why and how

Recently I was asked about the role of a manager in developing their team, and I think it’s incredibly important, and yet often regarded as a luxury: - "if we get time, and if there's some budget left, let's do some training".

?So here are some thoughts:

Why it’s important

·????????First, develop yourself a bit more every year, and also, develop your team every year.

·????????These days you’re only as good as what’s between your ears.?Everything depends on your thinking, (and how much time you spend thinking), your creativity, and your relationships with other people.

·????????As a manager you are only as good as your team, so developing them is extremely important.?It’s cheaper to develop people than it is to recruit them in fully-formed (if that was even possible!) and also you often can’t choose your team anyway.

·????????We have to stay ahead of our competitors, so even if we are as good as they are at the moment, we won’t be next year – we HAVE to keep on getting better every year.

·????????Don’t feel threatened by developing the skills and knowledge of the people who work for you – you’ll be judged by how good they are, and also, if you can delegate parts of your job to them it frees you up to spend time on more important things – or even maybe to work shorter hours!

·????????Imagine a job where you weren’t learning anything new.?If you were good at it, and it was quite easy and quite well paid, how long would you do it for??Personally I’d get bored really fast if I wasn’t learning anything new.?I’d start thinking about leaving within a few months.?So, to keep your people, you have to keep giving the new things to do, increasingly big or difficult things, which means you have to keep teaching the new skills as well, just to keep them in their jobs.?Otherwise they leave, and replacing people is difficult and expensive!

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How you can do it – ten ideas

1.??????Be a role model.?Read books, go on courses, always be telling people about new things you’ve learned.

2.??????Encourage everyone else to learn – ask them what they have learned recently, and take an interest in any courses they have been on: what did they learn from the course, or the book they are reading?

3.??????Make it easy for them to learn – give them access to Linkedin Learning, and to a list of courses they can go on (maybe trainers coming in to the company or external courses they can go on, and which the company pays for) and have a library of business books that people can borrow.?Just a shelf in your office would do!

4.??????Have a monthly review in your head – is everyone who works for you learning stuff??Go through the list of everyone, in your head, and think “Do they have challenges which are stretching them??Have they been on a course recently??Are they taking it easy and not developing their knowledge and skills?”

5.??????Do an appraisal with everyone each year and ask them what they have learned this year, and what do they want to learn in the coming year?

6.??????Be a coach – try to teach something to someone in your team, each week.?Just one thing to one person.?Who needs help with something this week??Not you doing it for them, but you teaching them how to do it for themselves?

7.??????Delegate more – what would you like to delegate??Who can you train up so you can give it to them?

8.??????Make sure everything can be done by at least 2 people other than yourself, so it’s all covered.?If necessary, train more people up.?Certainly there should be NOTHING that only you can do!??Think about what you can’t delegate at the moment, and then how you can break it up into parts and start training people to be able to do it.?This will allow you to get promoted, as well as being more enjoyable for your team.

9.??????Give people brief secondments to different areas - a week with a sales person, three days in the drawing office, etc – so they can see what other people do.?Or get them to be part of cross-functional projects. This is great for teamwork as well as learning.

10.??Start a system of lunchbox talks where people who are doing interesting work give a 15 minute talk about what they are doing, to everyone who wants to come and listen while they eat their lunch.

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Finally – why should you bother with any of this??Why not go for an easy life and do the minimum???Well, that would be boring, and your job would be less secure if the company wasn’t as great as it could be.?We all want to be our best possible person and do the best possible work we can do, and work for the best possible company, don’t we?

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Onwards and upwards!

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Chris

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PS video here??https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXDFvIqABU&t=18s?