As a manager, it’s your job to handle a broad range of issues that affect your workforce—engagement, morale, turnover, and communication, among others. But all these issues are part and parcel of an even greater challenge: Employee productivity, the amount of work your team produces in a given time period.

Cross-functional teams come in all shapes and sizes—marketing and sales mashups, product and engineering collaborations, customer service and web design partnerships, and more.

It’s a long and winding path to the top and when you get there you can’t just put your feet up and take it easy. Being a great leader is all about how you approach not only your work and business but also your day-to-day life. There’s a lot to stay abreast of, from office politics to the sales forecast, resolving HR problems to installing new collaboration software to ensure your team work together cohesively.  Do you have what it takes? Let’s find out!

Keeping your team motivated can be tough. In fact, only 13% of employees feel actively engaged across the globe. That's a tough number to contend with.

Building a great team of employees is hard work. Finding the right skills, knowledge, and personalities to successfully work together (and then keep them together) is a huge accomplishment. And the process of building a better team doesn’t end there. The next step is help your employees develop their leadership skills. This can be more difficult than it seems.

As more and more companies are switching to remote workers for many positions, businesses are seeing the advantages. From saving money on office space to being able to attract highly skilled workers from across a wider geographic region, telecommuting is proving to be attractive for both employees and employers. Now the challenge is for management to keep up with their evolving workforce to keep employees as happy and productive as possible. Here are tips for making the most of your online workforce.

Are you providing leadership to your team? Do you have a good understanding of who does what in your team and how long it takes? Are you inspiring your workers to be more successful? Are you spending all of your time managing paperwork or clients, leaving no time for managing your employees? Are your employees happy and productive? If you aren’t sure about the answers to these questions, why aren’t you? Finally, how could you improve your leadership?

Think about what it takes to be successful leader. You want someone who takes charge, without fearing the consequences of making decisions. Great leaders connect with colleagues who follow directions and are empowered to help ensure the achievement of clearly presented goals. In the digital era, great leaders must multitask to keep the team focused on the job at hand. Loyalty, consistency, fairness, courage, and a sense of humour all represent traits that great leaders must possess.

Being a team leader is a tough job with a lot of responsibility. It can also be massively satisfying when you see the progress made by your team over time. You can learn a lot about yourself in this role too. If you want to be proud of truly contributing to the success of a team and the personal growth of the staff then the following are a few of the best ways of going about it.

Many people go through their entire careers dreaming of becoming a leader, but without fully understanding what the role is all about. This is the type of job that is ideal for some people but not for everyone. Therefore, before setting your heart on being a leader it is worth looking at the most important skills needed and seeing whether you possess them.