The weakest link in a chain is its strongest link, and the same goes for a team. Having a team attitude where the primary attitude is to support everyone at their weakest moments means that the entire team will grow in strength. This is why managing a team means managing the success of your business and why developing the people in your team is just as important as developing the ideas.

One of the key factors in identifying someone who is ‘management material’ is recognising the ability of them to helping develop people. Managers are vital to the success of firms and businesses, but also have a vital role in managing the talent on their team. Through good management, employees are given a chance to maximise their contribution to the team and have their performance and potential recognised for what it’s truly worth.

Team management in today’s business scene goes beyond simply just meeting quotas and statistics. Rather, there is a growing emphasis on developing the people within the team in order to improve staff retention and turnover. Ultimately, working for someone who takes their role as a boss as detached and de-personalised results in staff members feeling undervalued. Good managers take an interest in every individual’s development and helps them to deepen their skills as well as learning new ones.

Each company should make it a top priority to facilitate employee development and learning. It is proven from companies, such as the highly successful Google Corporation, that investing in the developing of people leads to greater growth outcomes. For instance, people that work for supervisors and bosses that have an interpersonal working relationship are more likely to have better productivity, higher sales growth, more loyalty to the work they are doing.

In order for managers to truly develop people on their team, they need to shift the focus from ‘excellent performance’ to ‘excellent growth performance.’ Managers need to ask themselves “how can my team members perform excellently while I help them grow.” Understanding that the latter part of this question informs the first part is the foundational step towards good management.

Some other key attributes that good managers should strive to have in order help their team members develop include:

• Show empathy and listen to people on the team

• Communicate clearly, openly, and transparently

• Lead by example and demonstrate the right attitude

• Be positive and produce constructive, polite criticism with the intention of helping people grow

• Use positive reinforcement, thank people, and acknowledge their work at unexpected moments

• Coach people through a problem with a thorough step-by-step process of outlining the problem, understanding what steps they’ve already taken to resolve it, consider next steps and provide resources, and be available for assistance if they still need it

• Encourage people to be innovative, think creatively, and take calculated risks

• Provide a flexible working space that is able to adapt to individual’s personalities, strengths, and ideas