In any organisation, the human factor is crucial to success. Similarly, managing people within a team could be a challenge that my team faces. Recognising this fact, it is important that we are careful with team management, so as to prevent conflicts arising within the team, and to achieve optimum performance of the team.
In view of many tight deadlines to meet, it is important that the job is evenly split. Juggling with the numerous assignments in the other modules, everyone is pressed for time. Despite such heavy workload, we still have to each do our part to get the job done. As a leader, I have set date and time for our project meetings and work allocation. I am glad that my team mates are very cooperative and we do not face the problem of starting our discussions late as everyone is punctual. However, I failed to take the advantage to transform this time into good use, ending up having a lot of last minute work to be completed.
Personally, I think that I am greatly at fault for the late rushing of work. This problem could be easily solved by planning meetings well, sending out proper agenda with sufficient time for my teammates to be well-prepared for meeting. Being diffident of the requirements, I tend to send out low quality agenda which caused the meeting to be less productive. To make things worse, my agenda are usually sent out late, having my teammates to rush their research and preparations.
In addition, I see that we have each of our own strengths. Allocating the right amount and right field to each member is important. Given a certain strength and skill set, each member will be allowed to contribute their best in their specialised field. Furthermore, advice could be sought from them, to facilitate team learning and catalysing the rate of work done. For instance, Xiangyun is very experienced in programming. He clearly knows which specific portion of the project is feasible, thus hearing from his advices, I have learnt a lot. Realising his strength, it would definitely be an honour to have him to lead us in the implementation of the project.
Apart from proper work allocation, to sustain a strong and committed team, we have to give recognition to each member for their efforts. Our feedback is essential to keep the team going. We should never be stingy on our compliments, and when there is any improvement to be made, our feedback has to be constructive, stating clearly the areas required for improvement.
I believe that team management is not easy. When it is not handled properly, major conflicts and unhappiness is inevitable. This in turn would lead to the downfall of the project. On the other hand, once team management is done well, an enthusiastic team will be built and everyone will be motivated to contribute their best, unleashing the team’s maximum potential.
