Here's how you can develop the key skills and qualities needed to be an effective team manager.

1. Improve communication skills: Practice clear and concise communication to ensure everyone understands goals and expectations. 2. Foster emotional intelligence: Develop the ability to understand and manage your emotions and those of your team members. 3. Enhance decision-making abilities: Learn to make informed and timely decisions, balancing data with intuition. 4. Build conflict resolution skills: Acquire techniques to handle disagreements and find mutually beneficial solutions. 5. Encourage team collaboration: Promote a culture of teamwork and cooperation by valuing diverse perspectives. 6. Pursue continuous learning: Stay updated on industry trends and management techniques to continually improve your skills.

Effective communication involves not just speaking clearly but also listening actively and empathetically. As a manager, clear communication ensures that tasks are understood, goals are aligned, and feedback is constructive.

Always listen to the individual as different personalities can convey things very differently. Ensure you know your staff well.

This skill involves understanding and managing your own emotions and those of your team members. It includes empathy, self-awareness, and the ability to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously.

Emotional intelligence starts with you. It is the ability to be curious about your emotions and question why you felt a certain emotion at a particular time. This not only helps you but it helps you to better understand others. It is a recognition that people's emotions, thoughts and ideas have stemmed for their personal life journey, which may have involved some rocky paths. However a true leader sees those rocky paths as a building block to help and improve the individual to bring unique value to the team. True leaders see the bigger picture which allows them to NOT lead with ego and instead permits individuals to express who they are authentically, bringing the best version of themselves to help the team achieve their goals.

Be aware of outside issues. Including life stages as hormonal issues could affect an individual very easily. Have open conversations.

Continuous improvement requires an honest, transparent and mature culture. These are some of the steps you can take: 1. The "why" needs to be communicated. Why is continuous improvement important and how does it benefit the team. 2. Leadership needs to create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their feedback and challenging the status quo. 3. Feedback needs to be factual and constructive which aligns with the vision of the department or the overall vision of the organisation. 4. Inspire your team to find new skills and interests which will help create a healthy culture of proactive improvement.

To be an effective team manager it is imperative that you: -Listen to your team. -Take the time to understand everyone's strengths and ambitions so you can position them for opportunities to grow and shine. - Be mindful of their bandwidth, make sure they are taking their PTO and have a good work-life balance. - Check-in to see how you can better support them and take appropriate action. - Show appreciation for their work - In 2024 they likely endured 8 interviews to get that position, therefore treat them as the expert you hired them to be and do not micromanage. - Stop giving the team trinkets. If you are going to reward them - cash, gift cards and time off are far more appreciated than a pizza party or happy hour.