First of all, I would like to tell all of you that this post is going to be a living post at least for some time. I have recently started managing teams and I will keep adding my learnings as to what works well while managing a team. Since I am managing mostly software teams, so my experiences might be a little skewed towards that but generally, they should apply to other fields too.
Have clear expectations right at the beginning
One of the biggest mistakes I made with my very first hire was that I thought since I have hired a great person, so he will automatically deliver great results. But this is nowhere even close to the truth. The truth is: You have to get the work done from them. It’s not the other way round.
So the most important thing to do while adding members to the team is to have clear expectations of results. You should tell what kind of results you would want the other person to have and with what quality. This will help you in avoiding a conflict later because of expectations mismatch.
Delegate to Scale
Always remember, you have limited time to work. So, you can’t do everything. Delegation is one of the most important skills you need to learn as a manager if you need to grow and scale. Without delegating your work to others, how would you scale?
Product management for your rescue
Since you need to delegate your work to others, so you need to do it in a way so that you have minimum dependencies across people. Try to assign tasks to people such that they can continue making their own progress. This needs lots of thought and understanding of the project holistically so that you know what all pieces are there and what all can be delivered independently.
Never hesitate to reward
You get people to work for you but they join you to get rewarded. So, while they help in getting the work done for you, you need to make sure they are rewarded appropriately. I personally believe in meritocracy a lot. So, have some mechanisms like a bonus, etc via which you reward your top performers better.