According to the article “4 Tips for Managers Working With a New Team,” by contributor Sammi Caramela on www.businessnewsdaily.com, starting a new management position with employees you’ve never worked with before can feel intimidating. In order to earn your new team’s trust and respect, you need to build a professional relationship with them by learning about their interests and needs as workers. As such, here are four tips Caramela provides from Vip Sandhir, CEO and founder of HighGround, for managers working with a new team:

• Hold one-on-one meetings. These meetings will help you understand your workers’ goals, strengths, weaknesses and more. Schedule these meetings frequently so that your employees know that you’re genuinely interested in their development. Furthermore, doing toward the same goals.
• Find out about employees’ feedback preferences. While the feedback process might be intimidating for employees, you can ease the tension by customizing how you give that feedback to each worker, based on his or her needs. Ask questions about their wants and needs from the company, issues they have during work, their workloads and whatever else you need to start the conversation. At the same time, encourage employees to give honest feedback about managers’ performances so that adjustments can be made on every front. “Act as a coach instead of a dictator to ensure employees feel comfortable providing feedback on their own performance — as well as your own progress as their supervisor,” Sandhir says.
• Promote open communication. Open communication can improve collaboration and generate new ideas, so every employee needs to feel he or she has a voice, no matter that person’s position.
• Analyze current problems and offer solutions. It can be discouraging to discover management problems at the beginning of this new relationship, but it’s important to acknowledge these problems and work with your new team to fix them. “Ideally, managers aren’t going into situations where they’re blindsided by serious issues,” notes Sandhir. “However, if they’re unexpectedly confronted with problems on a team, they might actually be at an advantage. New managers arrive with a clean slate and can ask honest questions about the issues.” Don’t be afraid to ask your team for guidance — there’s no “I” in team, after all.

Read the original article here.