Teams Need a Healthy Mix of Skills

It’s important that digital leaders not just make sure their employees get the technology training they need, but that they also get the right mix of skills in the process. With recent labor challenges dominating the headlines, there is no better time than now to give your team the skills they need to succeed.

Here are 5 ideas on how to do that very thing.

  1. Improve soft skills: While it’s easy to focus on the nuts and bolts, education necessary to do an IT job, it’s vitally important your team continues to also develop more generalized work abilities like clear communication, proper meeting etiquette, and sound business writing, just to name a few.
  2. Open up opportunities: It’s easy for employees to narrowly think of themselves as “geeks” or “nerds” so, in turn, they tend to stay isolated from the rest of the unrelated departments within their company. The reality is, though, that letting IT staff crossover and shadow folks from accounting and marketing, for example, enables your team to see the bigger picture of what your business does. And that’s a reward of its own.
  3. Establish ownership: When someone owns an outcome from an important project or is responsible for the upkeep of a particular software your team uses daily, it not only makes that person more accountable, but it also provides an opportunity for them to learn.
  4. Build your plan with your team: It’s tempting for leaders to assume they have answers. Instead, pull in team members to help you create your strategy for the new year. Hear them out. Take in their ideas. The buy-in they will feel from being a part of the process almost guarantees they’ll be excited about executing the goals that were established in the process.
  5. On-the-job training is still king: While formal training programs are great, letting your people learn as they go is still an invaluable way to up their knowledge. Ask a bit more of a person than you normally might, or maybe let team members run the next staff meeting instead of you. Any little “stretch goal” experience will pay dividends down the road.