My Experience of Being a Team Captain and Being a Manager

Leadership is an art and in my belief, everyone is a leader in their own interest and passion. Leadership has no bar of age or event. In this article, I have given my example of being a leader in sports which helped me to lead my team in my profession. Not necessarily everyone can develop leadership from sports but there are many other activities like art- singing, painting, photography, acting and so on which can develop leadership skills in a person. My experience of being a team captain and being a manager has below reasons to be productive.

What is Common in a Captain and a Manager?

What is common in being a manager and being a captain is leadership. Prior to the beginning of the profession, most of us go through the phase of being a leader in our extra curriculum activities. Someone leads in sports, someone leads in arts, someone leads in competition, and someone leads in social activity.

What I learned from Captainship

Playing Cricket has been a hobby for many people and so was it for me. Being a captain and leading the team in field has been one of my biggest passion during schooling and college. Winning the match was never easy. A lot of strategies and planning were involved. During the game, executing plans guiding, and motivating the team happened to be the most crucial part. If all went fine then the team wins the game.

Challenges as a Manager

While dealing with the work and people there are two types of challenges:

1. Internal – Internal challenges are related to the team, inter-department – material sourcing, operations, finance, etc. Non-conformance or disagreement or delay could be the main challenges faced internally.
2. External – External challenges and issues are related to outside business partners, like – customers, vendors, service providers, etc. During work, many issues pop up which was not planned, changes from customer or vendor make the execution part difficult.

How Challenges Could be Dealt?

1. Internal – Keeping the team motivated, train and guide them in the right direction, anticipate problems and plan to avoid them, prioritizing work under pressure, solving issues within the department and with other departments etc are ways to manage the internal challenges.
2. External – External challenges are never easy to manage as it needs expertise and right decision. Issues need to be dealt with tactfully, understanding the problem practically and communicating rightly to overcome this are keys.

Of course, captainship during college has given me the strength of leadership. Dealing with pressure, managing team, guiding and motivating team members, leading the team to complete the project ar