Team Management
Good Team Management is the way to go to great results. Without a working and functioning team you will most likely not have the best performance.
There are several things you need to consider:
Expectation Setting
Setting the right expectations with your team and every member is very important. It prevents member to drop out during the term due to being overwhelmed with the time & effort expected from a member to contribute. Therefore there are a few simple aspects that are to be considered when setting expectations with your member:
Every member should be aware, that being part of this organization requires a certain amount of commitment in order to ensure achievements within your LC. Therefore a time investment of 6-8 hours per week is a working amount that is absolutely reasonable and should be communicated right away. This time frame does not include team meetings and LCMs, it only describes the amount of working hours.
Fixed dates are recommendable in order to achieve a routine working flow and to avoid coordination issues every week. Fixed dates refer mainly to team meetings and LCMs. In iGIP, setting fixed dates for calling or matching days are also recommendable.
Be sure to explain the flow to everybody, what exactly you expect your member to do and how to deal with it. For example, just mentioning cold calls as a part of the flow is not enough, you should mention that they may have to deal with rejection and that you have to be persistent in order to be successful. The same goes for the 17 days matching checklist, which is something that should be communicated right away in order to ensure the right attitude and knowledge in handling the working flow in iGIP.
Just talking to your member during team meetings and LCMs will often not cut the necessary amount of communication in order to be efficient. Therefore your team should be aware that availability is necessary and in which form they can expect to hear from you. That could be different kinds of communication channels:
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Slack / WhatsApp
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Facebook
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Calls
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Skype
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E-Mail
Communicate in an understandable way what is exactly expected of each member. This can be done when handing out and explaining the JDs, which includes clear MoS and KPIs in addition to the time effort.
We are working in order to achieve exchanges. Calls are meant to produce company meetings, which results in TNs, which are meant to be matched in order to bring an intern to Germany. Communicate clear, that performance is not solely determined by the efforts you put into a task, but the results, that should come with it. Especially in iGIP, where it can take time to welcome the first interns, it is necessary to create a sense of urgency & necessity to perform as best as you can and now.
Exams are close, we get nervous and have a lot of stuff to learn. We all know it, we all are aware of the level of focus which is normally invested. However, exams are not an excuse for not doing anything for AIESEC. Investing a few hours of a week for a member to contribute to their team is not too much to ask and will not be a problem, if communicated right away. In order to ensure a lasting working flow despite the exam time, collect all necessary data (exam dates) from your member and respond to that issue by adjusting the schedule, if really necessary.
Rules are a necessary part of managing a team and setting the right expectations for the time to come. Rules that should be included in every team are:
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When being contacted by your team member or your VP reply within 24 hours
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Regular attendance of team meetings and LCMs
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Fulfill your tasks according to the DDL
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Weekly updates regarding process of given tasks (e.g in team tool, personal talk, sheet)
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Goal Setting
An individual goal setting talk ist the perfect tool for you to break down the team goal to your individual members and make them feel accountable for reaching their own goal. Furthermore, it is good space to get to know your member better and understand what drives him.
The agenda may vary depending on if it is the first Talk or not. Some Aspects may also be shortened if TM is doing PDTs for you. But keep in mind that knowing your members personal whys and what they want develop within themselves stays always important.
Personal Check-In / Get2Know
Why: Why did you come to AIESEC and why are you in AIESEC now?
Personal Development: What did you learn so far? What do you want to learn? How will
you see in half a year that you improved on this? How can I support you in reaching this
goal?
Building the bridge to personal goal setting:
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If it works well you can directly built a bridge from what your member wants to learn to the functional goal. Raising a specific number of TNs can show that someone improved in sales skilly and matching a specific amount of TNs can show improvement in persistance and [menschenkenntnisse].
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If you can’t draw a line from the personal development to the goals you can make a cut and explain (again) the teamgoal and the reason for it, how backwards planning works and ask then how many live changing experiences he/she wants to be responsible for creating.
However you do it. In the end your member should have one concrete goal of realizes that he wants to enable!
Always keep in mind that a goal is supposed to be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound)
Breaking it down:
Now comes the part of breaking it down into KPIs and Action Steps. Use backwards planning again to explain how many matches/raises/leads contacted it needs to bring xy interns to your city. Break it down to months and weeks, so your members as a concrete plan how to reach his goal and you know how you can track him.
Maybe you member is frustrated about one of the conversion rates. You can use the space to identify with him why it is not working and what needs to happen there to improve it. This can lead to additional action steps like organizing a sales workshop with a professional sales trainer, attending a specific amount of networking events, contacting alumni and so on. This can also depend on the JD and your previous planning.
Documentation:
Document what you have agreed on in order to make it more binding and to have an overview. It also the basis for your tracking of the goal achievement. It can be also a good idea to document all of this in a google spreadsheet which each of your members have access to.
Social Outro
Tracking
Why should you set yourself a goal if you are not checking if you are reaching it? Would you set yourself the goal to go to Harvard and then not check if you send out the application or if you got an answer but wait until the day comes where classes start and just hope that you were accepted?
Of course that sounds ridiculous, but it is not so different to what lots of us do when they set themselves a term goal. They set a goal of X Exchanges, kick off sales activity, do matching, take care of interns and in the end some amount of exchanges where realized. Then they check if it is what they planned. If not they are disappointed and if they reached it they have no clue why.
Tracking is crucial to see if you are on track of reaching your goals or if you need to adapt you plan to reach your goal. It enables you to go through a learning process. Only if you see that you don’t reach your numbers you can start identifying what is wrong and come up with new ideas.
The same goes for your members. You not only track them to hold them accountable for their goal but also ensure that they learn something on the way.
The most important question after tracking numbers is always the WHY and the without an action that follow out of it the whole process is worth nothing!
Tracking via Salesforce
You can either create your own Reports and Dashboards or use the ones that were provided by the NST. In the following I’ll explain you how you can use the reports for weekly tracking.
Very important:
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If you want that your logged acitivites show up in the report make sure that they match the filter criteria! Eg: The team needs to be iGIP, ER or ICX.
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Distinguish between Sales Call (if you are doing a first cold call) and Calls (when you are calling a partner company in daily business) ïƒ That is the only way you can later calculate correct conversion rates
What is each Report used for?
Calls/Xing/Linkedin: measures everytime you contact a company via these channels. Also contains if you call a company about the candidates you send them, thus the number is higher than you actual new leads contacted.
Company Meetings&Evaluation Meetings: All company meetings that where created between (...) and (...) no matter if already completed or not
Matches: Shows your matches
Raises: Shows you raises
Sales Calls: If you distinguish correctly this shows your newly contacted leads.
How to use is?
Adapt the timeframe for your needs. You can also adapt other things but then please make sure not to save the report but use the save AS function to save it somewhere to your personal reports.
Review your numbers
Having a data bases is great but what is more important is what you make out of it. Ask yourself why goals where reached or not. What need to happen in order to improve? Is one of the conversion rates extremely bad?
Contact your team or approach them on the teammeeting. Praise the ones who reached their goals and ask them how the did it so others can learn from it. Ask the others why they didn’t achieve it and what will be different next week.
Making a routine out of it
If you don’t have a fixed date for tracking you will most likely forget about it often or just do it once a month. So set yourself a fixed date in your calendar to do it. Ideally you set it the day before your team meeting or right before it. This way you create a sense of urgency for yourself, because you need these information to prepare your teammeeting.
Future Talks
When should you think about having a Future Talk with your member?
There are two simple questions you can ask yourself:
In the way my member is currently fulfilling his JD does he develop himself? If someone only has 2 hours a week for AIESEC and thus can't come to teammeetings regulary and doesn’t fulfill his tasks, then it is not possible that next to not contributing to the team goal and AIESECs vision, this person is not able to develop himself in AIESEC. In AIESEC you always get out what you are putting in. If your member doesn’t develop himself right now and doesn’t contribute, there is no reason to stay. Is the member causing more work than it is worth and is this dragging the whole team down? Of course there are always excuses why you still don’t want to let somebody down: It’s just those really important exams this month and next month. She really wants to get better on her time management so she should stay to improve it here. If you realize that it causes you a lot of work to track this person and you feel like you’re still not getting where you want, it is time to have a future talk. If one person is not working and is still getting a lot of attention this can drag down the whole team. Why should I do something if xy is doing nothing at all and is still getting extra treatment? Sometimes we spend a lot of time focusing on the people who not work and who maybe don’t even want to. Instead we should focus on the potentials in our team.
Having 5 great ambitious individuals who feel that their work is purposeful is worth a lot more than 10 people out of which 3 are not really working.
Either let the person find their personal why again and get them back on track with clear action steps. Maybe a shift to another team might be a solution because the person sees there more clearly how he can develop.
Or you decide together that leaving AIESEC is the best option.
Personal Check-In
Why are we here?
What is the reasons you are in AIESEC?
No matter what the reason is (I want to learn xy, I want to have a positive impact on yz...) ask the person: With what you are currently doing, do you think it is possible to reach that?
Make clear that AIESEC can only give you personal development if you are willing to put effort in it. If there is no time because there are other things that are more important and where you’re member learns more/has more impact that’s fine.
That way it is just important to communicate it and to have a clear cut.
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Mostly the member comes up himself with the solution that other things are more important and that it is the best idea to leave AIESEC. Then the problem is solved and you can talk about feedback and future development outside of AIESEC or maybe also through an Exchange. Make sure that the member leaves AIESEC with a in general positive feeling.
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If the member insists on his personal why and that he wants to ensure to improve and invest more you need to agree on clear next steps with deadlines and expectation. Make the member also aware of what is going to happen if it won’t work out. Set a date for a new talk in around two weeks and evaluate if it worked or not. If you don’t see any improvement it is time for you to decided that the member has to leave your team.
Social Outro.
Make sure to end on a positive note