Stand up for Your Team

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Yet no matter how badly they screw up it’s your job as their manager to take the blame. When the team screws up you take the blame; when they do something right you give them the credit for it. That’s how being a leader works. But that’s only part of your job of standing up for them.

It’s your job as a manager to make your team more productive. There is no reason for a team to have a manager if the manager does not help the team produce more than they could have without a manager. One way to make your team more productive is by buffering them from some of the distractions. Distractions take away time they could be spending on productive work and make them less efficient when they do work.

These distractions include things like:

* Office politics

Office politics can eat up a lot of time without getting anything done. Help them build the networks they need, but keep them from wasting time on the in-fighting and backstabbing of some office politics.

* Rumors

As soon as a rumor starts, the work either slows down considerably or stops completely. As their manager, you are in a position to stop a lot of the rumors. You can identify which ones are unfounded and tell your team that they are.

* Self-defense

When employees think that they have made a mistake, they start preparing their explanations about why it wasn’t really their fault and why it won’t happen again. As their manager, give them more time to be productive.

Bottom Line

It takes less time for you as the manager to deal with all these distractions for your team as a whole than for them to do it individually. That’s where the biggest productivity benefit comes from. The more time you save for them, the more time they have to be productive for you and the rest of the team.

Source: forbes.com
Source: http://www.navigossearch.com