Team Building Strategies for IT Managers

In order for any IT manager to be a success, the team that you are managing has to learn how to work together. All too often what IT managers don't realize is that your team may not know how to work together and they are going to need you to show them how to do this. What You'll Find Inside: HOW CAN AN IT LEADER CHANGE AN ENGINEER INTO A TEAM PLAYER? AN IT MANAGEMENT NIGHTMARE: MANAGING TROPHY KIDS CHEAP & EASY IT MANAGEMENT: HOW TO USE SOCIAL-NETWORK ANALYSIS TO BOOST TEAM PERFORMANCE GOOGLE’S LESSONS FOR MANAGING TECH-SAVVY TEAMS Team building is a soft skill that too many of us have never had any training on how to grow and cultivate. It starts with understanding that every member of your team is an individual. This means that you're going to have to deal with team members who don't want to work with each other as well as members who are locked into destructive competition with each other. As though that wasn't enough for you to have to deal with, in the modern workplace there are multiple generations working together. One of the greatest challenges that you'll be facing is discovering how to manage the millennial generation – the so-called trophy kids. You need them to be a part of your team, but in order to get them to be an effective part of your team you are going to have to discover how they want to be managed. Managing in the 21st Century means that social media tools are available to help you connect with your team. You'll need to be careful how you use them, but these tools can help you to bring your team together into a single functioning unit. The good news is that the solution to building teams is not something that you have to dream up all by yourself. Other firms have faced the same set of challenges and you can learn from them by studying both what has worked for them as well as the things that have not worked for them. Once you are able to get your IT team to work together, you'll need to be careful to make sure that you are not affected by the downside of teams. Make sure that group decision making doesn't cause you team to veer off into the wrong direction. This book has been created to provide you with the soft skill training that you are going to need in order to effectively build teams. The goal is to use the skills and talents that each member of your team brings to the table in order to build a high performance team. For more information on what it takes to be a great IT manager, check out my blog, The Accidental IT Leader, at: www.TheAccidentalITLeader.com