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This is the second in my series of I.T. leadership and team-building posts for IT managers and supervisors. What are the leadership qualities that allow you to successfully manage the team and retain key individuals?
Key Leadership Qualities
Ensure You’re Providing Competitive Pay and Benefits
On most scales of job satisfaction, pay and benefits are not at the top of the list of important considerations for employees, but they must be competitive with similar companies in similar industries. Otherwise, employees can start to think you’re taking advantage of them. They may start to feel resentment.
Recognize and Reward Problem Solving
Remember, you’re dealing with tech people. Most of us love problem-solving. In fact, that’s a big reason we got into tech jobs. Recognize and reward your staff members who successfully solve problems. One of the key leadership qualities is knowing how to tailor the form of recognition to the individual.
Set Clear and Measurable Objectives for Project
Next, set clear and measurable objectives for both short-term projects and ongoing performance. Most employees want to deliver outstanding performance. To do that, they need clear guidance on expectations and a clear understanding of how they’ll be measured. Seek their input on what are reasonable expectations and reasonable metrics for measuring their performance. This applies to both short-term projects as well as their overall job performance. This is another of the key leadership qualities.
Praise Publicly, Criticize Privately
That is almost always good advice. Doing the opposite is almost always bad. Watch, however, for employees who don’t like to have attention drawn to them. They might lower their performance, so they don’t have to be embarrassed in front of their peers. They still need to be praised for their good work, but the nature of that praise needs to be tailored to the individual, possibly in private.
Provide Educational and Enrichment Opportunities
Employees are most engaged when they feel that they’re growing, both professionally and personally. You can offer to provide online training such as what I offer at compassionategeek.com or pay for employees to attend workshops and seminars. Consider providing tuition reimbursement for employees who take college-level classes. Support tech employees by paying for a test lab, perhaps using retired equipment or virtualization
How these five factors are implemented with one employee is not necessarily how you should implement them with another employee. As an effective leader, you must be aware of each employee’s individual needs, style of working, and interaction styles with colleagues in the workplace.
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