As a team leader and manager I have a constant struggle with strong headed individualities. I deffinatly want them to be individuals but I need them to be a team. how do you strike this balance?

How much and how often does it become too much? or does it?

Having worked with the same group for several years, the need to avoid stagnation occurs. With strong leadership and clear goals, a team must continue to strive for success. Complacency can be a common enemy, so encouraging new ideas has become critical. Each member must be reminded that his or her role is important.

I have been with my current company for about 5 years now and have been the only one in my department. Over the years the school has grown and in my particular department, I am in need of additional help. Soon I will be faced with managing additional staff and wanted to be prepared for a leadership role and that is what promted me to take this course. I am solely responsible for this department. I have two concerns, one is that I will be afraid to delegate and leave responsibility to someone else because I feel ultimately it will fall on me. Secondly, because I feel that way I will continue to keep my plate full and not be able to grow as a team. I know that I have to work on this, but I know when I do something that it is not only done right but to the best it can be. Any suggestions on how to lessen controling behavior?

I have an opportunity in my position because a segment of the team I lead suffers from groupthink. Now that I'm aware of it I'm going to get it out on the table so that we can effectively deal with it and create some positive outcomes.

I believe integrity, honesty and compassion are all key to being a successful leader. I believe in utilizing a Democratic technique when leading. Getting your employees input and designating responsibility not only helps with motivation but also with the success of an organization. Some other traits are the ability to listen and react constructively and to align others towards a common goal and uncover common barriers that may inhibit an employee to do their job.

How can leaders maintain themselves to stay motivated?

As a manager and a teacher I experience the parallels of managing instructors in the work-place and students in the classroom on a daily basis. Both roles require similar management and leadership skills. I believe no matter what you are managing, wether it be a classroom or an office, one must continuously "take inventory" of students and staff. How do you keep up on knowing what your students or staff need to excel in the classroom or on the job? Needs may vary from identifying and catering to specific student learning styles to identifying instructor (employee) weaknesses and ways to improve upon them.

How do you accomplish team cohesiveness consistently with minimal conflicts?

How do you improve team empowerment with minimal micromanagent?

It's imperative that you know your employees and their capabilities and limitations. It will assist you greatly in the determining which of management strategies you should use.

In a nutshell, I believe lack of communication or ineffective of communication is the predominant obstacles.

When working with my team, at times it seems that individuals that take more work to motivate fall in and out of motivation more easily than those that stay motivated. What is a good way to keep the less motivated people stay motivated longer?

How do we motivate the Non Motivated? As a new manager, i'm finding this a bit of a challenge. There are some in the team who have no problem going that extra distance, who clearly care about what they do, and then there are some who just dont seem to care. I was always highly motivated and worked hard to always be improving myself and what i did, so its difficult for me to understand those who dont follow that lead and i'm just struggling a little with what to do about it.

Although I oversee one co-worker, she is highly motivated and productive. She is an excellent employee and co-worker, however sometimes she needs to slow down because it seems unprofessional. How would I communicate this without discouraging my co-worker. She is also highly competitive and keeps her number up always above mine which is great but when my numbers happen to go above about hers she makes it known and she demonstrates becoming discouraged. I tell her it is a team effort.

How would you go about trying to motivate a group of instructors when you yourself are not able to get support from your leadership team? There are times when it takes the support and at times resources to do so and this is my delemma.

I enjoyed the content. But would like more feedback on how different teams work together. Many of us work in various teams. I can apply these to several teams I work with. The issue is often how one team breaking apart affects other teams. IE management teams effecting department teams.

I found this class a great refresher! Wonderful topics !!

Many managers feel that those that work for them need to be lead by correcting the negative. What I mean by this is that they feel they have to point out the things an employee is doing wrong and correct those but ignore what the employee is doing correctly. The feeling is that they will know what they are doing right and this does not have to be addressed. This is an incorrect assumption most of the time. Making sure the employee know the correct course of action and reinforcing this action is as important as correcting the wrong course. Many times it may be more important.

Well, I would have to say commitment would have to be a biggie in my book. first of all, we need to know if members feel the team mission and goals are important. Are they willing to go the extra mile. So I would have to say getting a clear concept of your comrades help out a whole lot.