I’ll start with something seemingly trivial: you can’t do everything yourself. This is a straight path to frustration, burnout, and stunted growth – both yours and, most importantly, your company’s. In business, they say: “You’re only as strong as your team.”
Team management isn’t just about strategy and operations. It’s primarily about your relationship with yourself and your beliefs about other people. Your team largely reflects your decisions, emotions, habits, and attitudes. Simply put, if you see people as lazy and incompetent, you’ll control them. If you recognize responsibility and potential in them, you’ll start developing them.
The neurobiology of leadership and contemporary management sciences are clear: a leader’s emotions are contagious. Your attitude and way of acting shape the team atmosphere and relationships between people.
Below you’ll find 10 commandments of effective team management, based on my experience and the latest knowledge, which not only increase efficiency but also build engagement and loyalty. Implement them step by step as a program for developing yourself as a leader.
1. Take care of yourself – a leader is human, not a machine
Your team feels not only your words but also the tensions you carry. A stressed, burned-out leader disconnected from themselves won’t lead others far. According to Harvard Business Review research, leaders with high self-awareness are more effective and better rated by their teams.
A leader who doesn’t take care of themselves loses the ability to see people and make sound decisions. Take care of your sleep, your boundaries, offline time. Exercise. Be human and allow yourself imperfection. People don’t follow perfection – they follow authenticity.
2. Listen carefully, ask wisely – you don’t need to know everything
Strong leaders aren’t those who talk the most, but those who listen the most. McKinsey research shows that leaders who ask and listen increase team innovation by up to 35%.
Your people have contact with clients, problems, reality. If you don’t listen to them, you cut yourself off from the source of knowledge. Create a safe space for conversations. Ask: “How do you see this?”, “What would you change?”. Show that their opinion matters, because it really does.
3. Don’t manage – lead
Management is control, reports, goals. Leadership is direction, meaning, energy. Teams don’t engage with KPIs, they engage with meaning. Leaders who clearly communicate the purpose of actions increase engagement by up to 63% (Gallup, 2023).
Your role isn’t just to “set people to work.” Your role is to give meaning and direction. Say: “Why are we doing this?”, not just: “What do we need to do?”. This is especially important for younger generations who expect work that has meaning and gives impact.
4. Delegate responsibility, not just tasks
It’s not about dumping work. It’s about giving space for decisions, experiments, own solutions. Inclusive leadership doesn’t just involve having diverse people on the team, but truly transferring power and the ability to influence decisions to them.
Do you feel terrified at the thought of your team’s “experiments”? 😉 Start with small steps and gradually transfer responsibility.
Instead of saying: “Do it this way”, ask: “How would you solve this?”, “What do you propose?”. Learn their point of view and don’t judge. Discuss arguments. This will not only broaden their perspective but allow them to better understand their role. Give people the right to make mistakes and learn. You’ll see how their engagement grows.
5. Manage through relationship, not just through goals
Relationship is the currency of contemporary leadership. People stay in companies because they feel seen and heard, not just evaluated by results. They feel they’re part of a team that supports them. Biologically, we’re created to live in groups, and the sense of belonging has enormous significance in work too.
Stanford University research shows that teams with high levels of trust are 50% more productive and creative.
Building relationships is daily practice: listen carefully, notice emotions, ask not only “How’s progress?” but also “How are you dealing with this?”, “What do you need?”. This is an expression of respect that other team members learn.
Emotions aren’t weakness, they’re information. Manage them instead of ignoring them.
6. Feedback is a gift, not criticism
Feedback isn’t an attack. It’s a mirror that shows where you are. If no one on your team gives you feedback – that’s not a sign that everything’s working. It’s a signal that people are afraid or don’t believe it will change anything.
Include a coaching management style. Ask open questions. Respond with curiosity, not defense. Create space where feedback is possible and valuable.
7. Trust is currency – you can’t buy it with fear
It’s not enough to be a competent manager – you need to be a consistent person. Be transparent. Do what you say. Keep your word. Admit mistakes. People don’t need an infallible boss, they need a predictable and honest leader.
Trust is built daily in small gestures. In whether you listen or dismiss. In whether you judge fairly or have “favorites.”
8. Be present – hands-on leadership works
You can’t manage from Excel level. Leaders we trust and want to follow are close – present, engaged, curious about what’s happening.
“Hands-on leadership” isn’t micromanagement, it’s being in contact: with the team, with processes, with the company’s daily life. Go down to the “floor,” walk around the office, talk. See how people work, what makes them happy, what frustrates them.
This is where trust, ideas, and real improvements are born. Your presence says: “What you do matters”, “I care.” Don’t control, listen. Ask. Be curious.
9. A leader learns faster than others
You don’t need to know everything, but if you want your team to be open, responsible, and independent, first show it yourself. You set the pace of learning and adaptation. Amazon, Google, Netflix – their leaders test, learn, change their minds because they understand that development is a condition for maintaining direction, not its negation.
Clear vision is like a compass, but flexibility allows you to react to terrain changes. When you as a leader learn, admit mistakes, and correct course, you show the team that it’s not about being infallible, but about jointly reaching the best solution.
The team observes how you approach failures, difficult decisions, ignorance, and learns to do the same. If you stand still, they do too. If you develop, they also have the courage to go further.
10. Don’t manage resources – develop people
Don’t say “human capital,” say “talent, potential, competencies.” Every person on your team is a microsystem of experiences, ideas, and needs. Your role is to help them grow – at a pace that’s possible for them.
In practice, this means moving away from thinking in terms of “productivity” and “efficiency” as the only measures of success. Start with the question: How can I create conditions where this person feels safe and confident enough to develop their potential? Development doesn’t happen by accident, it’s planned and happens when someone feels seen, appreciated, and supported.
This approach isn’t just “soft HR climate,” but concrete, measurable results that arise from wisely investing in people. Great leaders don’t just recognize talents, but can extract them and place them in roles where they work toward a common goal. A leader today is more of a gardener than a commander: they don’t give orders, they create conditions for growth.
In conclusion…
Being a boss is a title. Being a leader – that’s daily practice.
You don’t have to do everything at once. Choose one commandment that resonates most with you. Stop. Think. And start implementing it. The rest will follow.
Effective team management isn’t control. It’s choosing daily presence, mindfulness, and courage. And a good leader isn’t the one who speaks loudest. Only the one people really want to follow.
Ewelina Zalibowska
Strategist, manager, entrepreneur, executive coach, and business mentor. For nearly 20 years, she has operated at the intersection of strategy, operations, and organizational development. For 9 years, she served as Managing Director in an independent production unit, responsible end-to-end for scaling operations, process optimization, and implementing innovations in the production-commercial model. Currently – as founder of Liboska Coaching & Mentoring – she collaborates globally with executive leaders, founders, and product teams. She supports them in scaling businesses, developing teams, and designing and implementing product and marketing strategies (NVP, NPI, DFM, GTM). For the past 3 years, she has also advised startups on building offerings and market entry. She combines passion for Lean, systems thinking, and managerial coaching, supporting leaders in developing modern leadership based on trust, engagement, and shared responsibility.
