If you lead a team, the good news is that you don't have to do it all yourself!
Here are 10 ideas which I have found to be very helpful in creating a collaborative and co-operative team ethos.
1. Don’t shoot the messenger.
2. Delegate responsibilities, not just tasks.
3. Genuinely ask for advice, not as a token gesture to show that you’re “listening”.
4. Insist that team members to come to you with suggested solutions, not just problems.
5. Take managerial decisions based on the specialist/technical advice of your team members.
6. Ask for regular updates/reports, but …
7. … Ask team members to summarise the issues on one side of paper or in half a dozen bullet points.
8. Give credit to others.
9. Provide support, eg in buying the right software or making sure that the appropriate training is available.
10. Back team members in public, castigate in private.
Other articles you may find useful:
Decision-making in a crisis.
Decision-making in a complex environment.
First published in Computers in Classrooms on 20th November 2008. Subscribers can download that ("compic_nov_20_2008.pdf") and other files from here.
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