5 Team Management Challenges (and How to Solve Them)

By Vartika Kashyap

Easier said than done?

How you can go about having a great team is how you manage them, how you take the challenges that come along with team management. This article will cover some of the team management challenges and their solutions to come up with a team that will help your business grow.

#Challenge 1: Building Trust

Trust in a team is important. It is a key building block of all relationships and is especially critical in teams. Leaders often don’t realize that a lack of trust can break down a team. Not only this, but it also de-motivates team members that ultimately affect the bottom-line of your business.

Research on teamwork in Google’s Aristotle Project also convinces that trust has an important role to play in teamwork. Amy Edmondson’s definitive research connects trust to psychological safety: “It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”

Solution: For many leaders, it is the hardest step. Start by breaking down barriers and build trust with every interaction. When you value your employees, it’s easier to establish interpersonal relationships.

#Challenge 2: Maintaining Good Communication

As a leader, it is your responsibility to make sure that everyone goes in the same direction through open lines of communication. Some of you may not be aware of the quality of communication and how your communication is perceived by your employees. A team that doesn’t communicate well is like an engine that is broken down into several parts. And if you have a culture of good communication, it can encourage a healthy and peaceful work environment.

Solution: If you’re a team leader, identify the common communication breakdowns, communicate clearly and regularly why your team exists. Invest in communication tools to ensure teams are on the same page, have one-on-one chats, group chats, and have a quick team and client conversations on the go. It will save time and help team members work more efficiently.

#Challenge 3: Unrealistic Deadlines

When missing deadlines become a habit in a team, it is a big problem. Research by Wellingtone indicates that only 37% of teams in the U.K. reported completing projects on-time more often than not. That’s a challenge!

Deadlines are a common source of stress for teams and leaders. Moreover, according to Liquid Planner, meeting deadlines was the second-largest issue faced by project managers in manufacturing (45.8%). If your team has developed the habit of missing deadlines, it could be because of unrealistic deadlines. Unrealistic deadlines are not motivating.

Solution: Using Gantt charts can contribute a great deal to help the team stay on schedule. With Gantt charts tool, you’ll have everything visually in front of you that will make it easier to set deadlines and handle the project.

#Challenge 4: Team Member Self-awareness

Is your team self-aware? If you’ve managed a team, you would have likely felt how some people are low in self-awareness: opposing feedback, playing blame-game for failure, not ready to learn things, takes unnecessary credit, increased stress, decreased motivation, and so on.

Recent research by Harvard Business Review found that “although 95% of people think they’re self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are.” It’s the leader who actually builds the team to become a self-aware and self-aware team is more fun to work with.

Solution: Define team vision, scope, and parameters clearly for measuring success. Always try to recognize the leaders in others and be willing to follow. This is the kind of culture everyone wants to be a part of.

#Challenge 5: Delegating Jobs

Delegating means to assign the responsibility to do something, such as a task or project, to another individual and move from what you can do personally to what you can manage. How do you decide who will do what without overloading or demotivating?

When you delegate jobs to the team, the team management will become a breeze. It means you are assessing their strengths and you’ll get to know them individually. And it’s true that people perform better when they feel they are employing their best skills, so delegate jobs that will suit each of the team members.

Solution: Evenly distribute tasks on task management tools without assigning too much to one person. Pick the right person, match the requirements to the jobs, be clear about the time they have, and reward success.

Conclusion

That’s all for now! Team management is difficult. As our working environment has become even more complex, so too will team management. However, I am hoping the above tips will help you bring the best out of your team and make the team feel connected at work.

Vartika Kashyap is the Marketing Manager at ProofHub – a simple project management tool and a powerful Asana alternative. This Asana alternative not only simplifies project management but also aims to increase team productivity with quick team collaboration. Vartika likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.