You Are In Charge

You Are In Charge

Congratulations! You’ve just been told that you’re in charge. After the initial rush of getting the plum job, you now have the unenviable position of making a group of people work together. Be it a whole office department or a boy’s basketball team, it will be you and a group of people who have to jive into a chorus. It’s a huge task but you only have one thing to remember in order to succeed – teamwork. Here are some tips:

First is to treat people individually before you can dream of making them work together. As individuals, each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. It’s your job to find these and use it to the group’s advantage. Let’s say, you have to make a float for a competition: your best bet in winning is to find which of your team knows how to design and the ones who can put this design into 3D form. The others can deal with the other logistics like the vehicles, schedules, etc. Working this way will get you better results rather than you assigning tasks to people who can’t or does not know anything about it. Everyone’s comfortable with the work they can do and you can bet that the work will be finished with less supervision from you. Remember, see them as individuals first and as a group second.

Next is to be certain of your own role. Be very clear to yourself and to everyone that you are the leader. Know your own strengths and weaknesses and work around it. You have the ultimate responsibility for the group and so you should invest a bit more than your group members do. These include believing that your team can do it, giving them morale support when they need it and scouting for help if you can’t do it on your own. Give equal opportunity to everyone on the team also. They will feel better if they know that what they’re doing is important too.

However, there is one drawback to being the one in charge – you have the role of the moderator and decision-maker at the same time. You can’t always fall back in the democratic system where the rule of the majority always prevails. These means you have to be aware of more information than they have and you have to make firm decisions on where the team should go. Even if you want to be partial with one person in your group, you have to decide on what’s best for everyone. Remember though that you are the one in charge and they should respect your authority at all times.

Lead on, you’re in charge.