Manage Your Team Successfully Through Reorganisation

The pillars of a modern management culture such as self-discipline, support, trust and empowerment are topics covered on leadership training programmes.

Terms for reorganisation measures such as “Lean Management”, or “Business Re-engineering” have one thing in common: they are commonly linked with personnel policy decisions. Staff are cut back, responsibilities are redefined, abilities are evaluated and hierarchies are flattened.

People feel that they have been unfairly treated and do not understand the situation as a result of these measures.

Leadership skills are a necessity for any team to understand and accept changes. Any management culture remaining intact during difficult times (and not only then) rests on four things:
but not self-discipline. If pressure from management is taken away, any control will be lost (as the old saying goes when the cat is away the mice will
Self Discipline: In traditionally managed companies, employees are managed by means of defined command structures.  Superiors give instructions, and staff carry them out. This totalitarian form of management creates submission, play).

Any establishment must develop self-discipline from within. Once developed it will be reflected in all aspects of daily life.  Workers will be more inclined to do more than just follow orders and meet requests. They will become friendlier to customers, visit more customers than is required of them and will not grumble about decisions, which, officially, they appear happy with.

This kind of atmosphere can only be created through target orientated management, which is an important leadership skill as covered on good leadership training courses:

·    Set your team long-term goals and discuss with them how these can be achieved.
·    Do not ask them to get your permission for every little thing, work with budgets which staff themselves determine.

Support: If totalitarian management systems operate in an organisation, the relationship between superiors and subordinates is governed by clear, strict rules. Contact is limited to the employee reporting to the superior and therefore is very one sided. Modern management systems rely on two-way communication and mutual support.

Assigning a mentor, in the form of an older, more experienced colleague to new staff, will create a system of horizontal relationships within your team. Gradually breaking down the vertical command structure.

Organise work in teams. A team-orientated reward is important. Insisting on teamwork while only recognising individual achievement is an inconsistency.

Trust: The relationship between your workforce and your business is, in the first instance, regulated by employment contracts. Both parties have agreed on a set of rights and obligations. In well-managed teams there is also a sense of family, an emotional relationship between the person and the company.  This kind of familiar, trusting climate arises through transparency, openness and honour.

Allow your staff access to any and all important customer information. This includes supposed confidential data, such as rebates given to major customers, which you, as team leader sanction and are accountable for.

Make being fair towards your staff a priority in all your decisions. This is predominantly important for all important decisions.  Validate your decisions and make the basis of your decisions apparent for your staff. Above all do not take any decisions on impulse, which cannot be reasonably justified later.

Far-sightedness and liberalism: Organisations which only think in terms of 3 month plans, annual budgets and objectives etc, will find their teams running out of motivation.

As someone who thinks ahead, talk about new opportunities and perspectives, instead of constantly talking to your people about past events, restrictions and regulations.

Encourage your workforce to express original ideas.  Allow them (limited) capital, even when the conclusion of an experiment is uncertain.

Have regular discussions with your team, without any taboos.  You can only be innovative in finding new solutions if you can question everything.

Think about these words by Kenneth Goode - “Stop for a moment and compare your keen interest in your own affairs with the little sympathy you have for the affairs of others, and recognise that every man on this earth feels exactly as you do. This will create the one, solid basis required for human interaction. In other words: success in dealing with people rests on your understanding of the other person’s point of view.”

Effectual implementation of these in the work place will increase the performance of your team and will also develop your management skills. For further ways of developing your management skills attend a good leadership training course.  

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