From team member to leading the team

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This is from my first publication on LinkedIn and as there are many ways to read and learn about leadership I didn’t just want to copy, paste and plagiarise for my first publication, although I am using a real life story to highlight a common issue when staff are promoted to positions of leader. team member to leading the team

Over the last two years or so, our business has been working with many line managers from the UK retail automotive sector.  As we have done so we have come across many committed and loyal people who have come up through the ranks of a department within their business.

More often than not they have found themselves being offered their new management role, primarily because they have done a good job as a member of staff with no management responsibility; some might have applied for the department manager’s position.

Once in position, many of these managers have struggled to move from being a team member to becoming the leader of the team – and they can find it hard to take that step up and, most importantly earn respect.

We always do what we can to support them and invariably this involves exposing them to tried and tested tools of the leadership trade that you would expect any good management development business to offer. In addition, as the team are an experienced and knowledgeable group of trainers and assessors, we are able to use real life stories and anecdotes to help bring things to life.

This week (w/c 23/11/2015) I was taken by a public article about a real life story that is playing out in front of all of us who live and work in the UK, with the changes in the Labour Leadership.

Dan Bloom from The Mirror wrote the article (The full article) and there is one very clear quote from Len McCluskey, the boss of the Unite Union which summed up the importance about moving from team member to becoming the leader which I taken from the article:

According to the York Press , the Unite general secretary told York University students’ union (about Mr Corbyn): “He has been a very principled MP and been able to say what he likes. But now he’s a leader and in leadership he can’t necessarily say the first thing that comes into his head. He has to take some balance”

For those of you trying to make that move to team leader, watch and learn by what Mr Corbyn does well and what he too struggles with as he tries to make his mark, stick by his principles and values, earn respect and lead a party of people who themselves are going through a significant period of change in a turbulent world.

Nigel Banister

 

 

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