According to the article “4 tips for managing multiple teams” by contributor Sarah K. White on cio.com, managers not only have to oversee day-to-day tasks, but they are also responsible for keeping employees working at maximum productivity and potential. For managers with multiple teams to oversee, the work becomes that much more difficult. However, White offers four tips for those who manage multiple teams that involves keeping employees motivated and happy enough to nearly manage themselves:

• Get to know your workers. Knowing what makes your workers tick will help you be able to manage multiple teams better. For instance, if you get to know your introverted employees from your extroverted ones, you can make sure that the introverted ones aren’t overshadowed by the extroverted ones. Or, conversely, knowing who your enthusiastic, extroverted ones are can help you keep meetings from going long, for instance. In addition, however, you need to understand what motivates your workers. Some are motivated by competition and need set goals to focus on, while others are motivated by collaboration and prefer recognition and encouragement. This way, you can tailor motivation to specific employees.
• Stimulate high employee retention. Part of the task of retaining employees is helping them to grow at a company. You can do this by testing their limits and pushing them past their comfort zones. By training them and pushing them, you learn their strengths and weaknesses, which allows you a better view of how they best fit in the company. In fact, you may even learn that one employee’s skills can help in another area of the business. By learning about their skills, you can also help employees polish them and make them grow.
• Mind the generational gap. There’s been a great amount of focus on Millennials lately as their workforce numbers continue to climb. In some ways, they are just like any generation, caring about job security, salaries and benefits; but in some ways, they might differ. For instance, Millennials are just starting their careers, so you will want to focus on helping them develop goals to plan their careers. Older generations, however, likely already have goals, and your job is to help them achieve them. Furthermore, preferences for how you give feedback might be another difference between them. Whereas Millennials might prefer shorter, lightweight feedback, older generations might be more accustomed to traditional, longer reviews.
• Promote a diverse team. To most effectively manage multiple teams, you must make sure those teams are diversified. Diversity can bring a wider range of unique, innovative ideas to light, helping you outperform your less diverse competition. As mentioned earlier, you must understand the diverse differences and personalities between your employees in order to help them grow, which will in turn make them happier and more motivated to work.

Read the original article here.