By Andy Butterworth, September 3rd, 2009.

Notable remarks from the article...

• Good management is vital if we expect our work to be effective.
• Let your team shine, and offer guidance and support when needed.
• What kind of manager are you?
• A skilled manager needs to be able to balance these styles according to the situation and maturity of the team.
• If you do not know what drives your team, you cannot possibly begin to get the best out of them.
• Running an unhappy team can damage your company.
• A team needs to be — and feel — invested in the work it does.
• It is the age-old problem of spending too much time working in the business and forgetting to work on the business.
• Learning what makes your team tick then is vital.
• You need some sign that you have achieved your goal.
• By sharing the company and team’s goals with each member, you show trust and gain theirs.
• One point that bears repeating is that your team members may not be motivated by the same things that drive you.
• Several books on management assert that creating an atmosphere in which team members feel personally motivated is better than trying to directly motivate them yourself.
• A lack of trust can be the biggest barrier for any team.
• You cannot train someone to predict all problems, but they can learn to flag problems when they occur in time to work around or resolve them.
• Everyone has the same number of hours in the day.
• Stephen Covey recommends a time-management matrix, shown above, which splits tasks into “urgent” and “not urgent,” and “important” and “not important.”
• Hold team meetings as often as needed, but keep them concise.
• An effective manager focuses on achievement, not activity.
• Understand what your team members like to do for downtime and what they have to do on an average day to improve their performance.
• If they are hitting their targets and producing work of an acceptable standard, while occasionally surfing the Web, then fine. Achievement, not activity.
• After all, your team’s effectiveness largely depends on your relationship with the members and the relationships between members.
• This principle posits that 80% of the rewards or results or profit or outcome come from only 20% of the effort or time or contributions.
• Find out how they think the team would perform better.
• If you tell your team that you will praise them when it does something right and reprimand it when it does something wrong, there will be no surprises.

Read the complete article:  Professional Team Management Tips For Creative Folks