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 Features
Becoming a Stellar Games Industry Manager, Part 2: Growing the Team
 Build Careers
A team’s main objective is to work together to succeed at a given task, and this is a lot easier when individual members are willing to augment their own skills. Good team leaders understand that a team’s future success depends in part on how individuals develop. Be ready to act as both coach and career counselor for your team. Help them advance their careers by encouraging them to develop their natural talents and provide training and support to make that happen.
The larger the team and the wider its mandate, the greater the chance for individuals to develop their careers by changing roles or being promoted based on their work. While promotion is usually vertical, team careers tend to progress laterally as people move to larger teams handling higher-profile projects. Do not discourage this. Help promising colleagues find suitable positions is good for the company. Even in organizations where vertical promotion is harder, individuals can still progress as they move from team to team.
However helpful you and other senior colleagues are, individual team members should accept responsibility for their own careers. Encourage each member to regard working on the team as part of a learning process, in which all lessons can open up new opportunities and help them build a body of qualifications to take to their next position – whether in another team, different department or outside the organization. Career building, like good teamwork, will always be more effective if it is targeted.
Build Team Spirit
That indefinable quality known as team spirit can be encouraged in a number of ways.
- Let team members know why they were chosen for their particular task
- Establish a common team purpose and specific goals to challenge their individual and team strengths
- Encourage the team to communicate
- Give praise when it’s due but don’t play favorites
- Ask your team for advice and act on it whenever you can
- Respond in detail both inside and outside the team
- Create and maintain a comfortable and friendly atmosphere in a team regardless of its structure, even when company procedures may sometimes seem at odds with the casual, occasionally even disorderly tone of an unofficial or informal work site or situation.
- Help team members relate to each other as unique individuals
Building team spirit will be determined by time constraints, budget and your team’s various personalities. Talking to team members outside office hours or in an informal environment may help everyone bond but family or other commitments may restrict some members from hanging out at the local pub after work. You may think that going to a baseball game is a great idea, but your team prefers an afternoon of video games and junk food. It’s always a good idea to check the “social pulse” of the team before you make plans for gatherings. Choose the right time and venue; know when your team needs lunch brought in, when it’s actually time for an off-site gathering or when an afternoon off from work will do the trick.
The Self-Managed Team
Self-managed teams (SMTs) are more independent than regular teams. They are found increasingly in organizations that have flattened their structures and cut out layers of middle and/or supervisory management as a way to streamline their work and cut costs.
Self-managed teams take total responsibility for a specific project from cradle to grave. Characteristics of these teams include the sharing leadership roles, enjoying a high rate of autonomy, democratic decision-making, group control over activities -- and total self-accountability based on individual and team results. As the leader of an SMT, you will usually give guidance only when it’s requested, leaving the team free to gain experience more or less on its own. While there may be a temptation to blame the team if something goes wrong, you will probably still be accountable directly to management.
When functioning properly, a self-managed team can be very productive. It can save on management costs, raise levels of quality and customer service, cut out process steps, reduce waste, and introduce more flexibility in the workplace. In addition to the economic benefits, such a team can provide a daily training ground for its members, who may need to develop their shills to take on the responsibilities of self-management. It the system works, expect to a rise in team morale and retention, and, with experience, more ability to react swiftly to changes in the marketplace.
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