Tips to Team Management and 10 problems you may face

All the problems a manager faces while working with his team directly affect the productivity and quality of your work. It also creates a communication barrier if it’s not resolved quickly. One of the major setbacks a manager may face is due to overlooking people problems in their team. So, the Project manager needs to be proactive. A manager will work more effectively and lead them better if they can address these issues as quickly as possible and provide a remedy for them. Now let’s look at ten people problems that a manager faces while working with his team.

1) Poor levels of performance

You know as a manager there are bound to be situations when a certain member of your team lacks productivity and this will directly deplete the productive growth of your whole team and your team members will lack the motivation to finish the project in the stipulated time frame. So it is your primary task to make sure your team members feel inspired and motivated. You can easily improve the efficiency of your team by constantly communicating with your team members and keep track of the work they’re doing.

Conduct weekly team review meetings discussing accomplished tasks and areas where the team lacks productivity.

Some people may be hesitant to discuss problems in a group, have one-on-one meetings for sorting such issues.

2) Lack of resources or skills

This might happen because you overlooked certain skill requirements of the project during planning, or you came to know that a certain skill or resource is required in the middle of the project. This will hinder the smooth workflow and hence the project will be delayed.

You should always have a clear-cut job description for the person you’re hiring so you can get some who fits the role properly.

You can schedule training for the team member(s) so that they can develop the skills that are lacking.

3. Lack of communication

Another challenge managers face when overseeing teams is ensuring effective communication. Because every team member has a different personality, there is a chance for miscommunication from time to time.

Increase the frequency of communication to ensure employees know exactly what you and other team members expect of them. Redefine standards that reinforce your team’s goals and purposes.

Consider implementing a messaging platform for the workplace that allows everyone to communicate quickly. Let them know if you prefer one form of contact over another.

4) Poor Teamwork

There is often a situation when you’re team members won’t be quite adaptive in working as a team since they have been doing a lot of tasks on their own. Also, your team may not be familiar with each other, thus having a hard time working with each other.

You can easily improve the motivation of your team by looking back at the purpose of the project.

You can always break down your team into groups of people so they work together and get the work done in a short span of time. This will help in better work productivity, as you will practice more team-building exercises.

5) No structure for change

You will find that the basic problem that most managers face is the lack of structure in place for change. This is something that happens when you are starting a project with a new team. What is your plan if scope change occurs at a certain time, or what if someone in your team leaves abruptly?

After judging the status of your new team and project, you need to carefully observe the timeline and resources accordingly so you can keep track of the productivity of your team.

Build a structure that makes it clear to your employees what are your expectations for next week, month, or even year.

6) Managing time ineffectively

You’ve to make sure that your work gets done properly on time, and you can only achieve this if you have a solid schedule to decide what work to do when. Also, keep track of the tasks which are taking up the team’s time and they are not spending time on the wrong tasks.

To overcome this issue, it is recommended to communicate to the team which tasks are most important and which are not with clarity.

Assigning tasks to a pair of team members to work together will also help them to keep each other in check.

7) Team is too friendly

Yes, we know, the team that gets along with each other works well but too much getting along turns the workplace into a chit-chat club, which we don’t want obviously. They’ll end up spending too much time chatting and discussing personal problems and hence productivity decreases.

Make it clear to the team that social gatherings must be planned for after work.

You can also conduct small gatherings once you reach a milestone to keep the team entertained.

8) Lack of trust

For better productivity, team effort is necessary. And team effort comes from trust. Trust building begins with people knowing each other in the team. You always put together a team and it is common that team members may not be familiar with each other.

Conduct a few “get to know” activities before beginning working on the project. It will prove to be a great step later on.

9) Employees having a negative influence

You know, at times when you’re managing people in your team, you will often come across employees who will cause problems in your work environment over and over. Address any problem before it becomes a major one and acts as a bottleneck in the workflow of a project.

The best way to avoid such situations to arise is by taking regular feedback from your employees after a week or so. So you can easily understand if they’re facing any problem regarding finishing a task or project itself. Or having communication barriers within the team. By getting the feedback you can give a solution then and there.

10) The Quality of work is not adequate

Your team is getting along, tasks are completed on time and under budget. Sounds like a dream, isn’t it? But take a look at the quality of work done. Is it meeting the stakeholder’s expectations or the project’s scope? If not, there can be multiple reasons. The team may not be trained for the task or the budget may be too underestimated or the timeline is not allowing the team to deliver the work with good quality. If so, you need to revisit the action plan.