How to manage multiple teams? Why was this question even raised? It shouldn’t be hard to manage more than one team simultaneously. Right? Well, wrong. Managing various teams at the same time is no joke. Understanding your team members requires strategic planning, the right tools, and a high emotional quotient (EQ). Especially, if you are a new manager you need to work on these skills.
Did you know that 40% of newly promoted managers fail within their first year and 6 months? That’s why it is important to understand that handling your teams will come with numerous challenges. Your success depends on your ability to delegate and effectively manage employees. However, with the right technology, key principles, and strategies, managing multiple teams and projects won’t be that tough.
Thus, in this post on how to manage multiple teams, we will give away all the useful insights you need. Today, we will cover important tips, tools, and strategies, and even provide you with the best software for multi-employees and team management. So, let’s get started.
How to Manage Multiple Teams: Challenges in Managing Multiple Teams
The no. 1 reason you need to know how to manage multiple teams is the numerous challenges that come with it. Simply put, the more your teams, the more your issues. Here’s what you have to tackle.
1. Priority Conflicts
Managing multiple projects and teams comes with overlapping deadlines, which can strain your brain. The challenge here is that prioritizing tasks, dependencies, and resource allocation becomes complex.
2. Gaps in Communication
Another reason to master managing multiple teams is that it’s easy to work in isolation, especially with remote teams. However, the unwanted misunderstandings, double work, and missed opportunities from cross-team collaboration are too great.
3. Varying Working Styles
Another reason you need to know how to oversee multiple teams is varying working styles. It’s second nature for your teams to adapt different styles of execution. However, this lacks standardization, which makes it hard to track progress, shift resources, and/or predict obstructions.
4. Scattered Knowledge
In multi-team work atmospheres, there is a risk of important information becoming distributed. Thus, knowing how to manage multiple teams also involves avoiding gaps and obstructions by:
- Maintaining knowledge bases
- Promoting documentation.
- Encouraging collaborative problem-solving.
5. Establishing Individual Accountability
In multi-team environments, establishing shared accountability is easy. However, having an employee take responsibility for their action is a tough job. Thus, one of the most effective team management strategies is to establish individual accountability and responsibility in your teams.
How to Manage Multiple Teams: 10 Expert Strategies
A part of mastering how to manage multiple teams is to wrap your head around expert strategies to effectively manage more than one team simultaneously. These strategies are tried and tested, so you can trust our word that these will lead you to success.
1. Establish Roles
One of the best productivity tips for multi-team management is to instill roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Stating who is going to do what and when is essential. How does the contribution of each team member add to the success of the project? Planning out these things will automatically ensure that you start on the right track.
2. Communicate and Collaborate
Teamwork is never smooth sailing. Issues such as exclusiveness, shyness, introverted mindset, and the inability to form the right words to ask something act as big barriers. Thus, knowing how to manage multiple teams also involves proper communication and collaboration.
As we mentioned before, you need strategic planning, the right tools, and a high EQ to understand your team members. What it does is establish a strong communication and collaboration channel, which streamlines the workflow.
3. Transparency and Visibility Matters
One of the proven successful team management techniques on our list is to establish transparency and visibility. Simply put, the former means clarity among your teams, team members, and between you and your teams. On the other hand, visibility means that everyone must have clear insights into who is working on what and when.
4. Employee Empowerment
Usually, this involves delegation, which people usually take as dictation, which is never the case. In reality, it is distributing authority to empower employees. Thus, knowing how to manage multiple teams is to know whom to give authority and how much. Another part is to guide your team leaders rather than dictating.
5. Use Project Management Software
Using project management software automates most of your work and lifts off administrative burdens. From scheduling and resource management to task creation and assignment, it makes streamlining the workflow simple with intuitive features.
6. Positively Use Conflicts
One of the simplest multi-team management tips on our list is this. By positively using conflicts, we mean to use the different success ideas of your teams as an opportunity. For instance:
- Marketing teams will want brand awareness. However, the finance teams will aim to minimize expenses.
- This diversity in competing goals and objectives can also inflict conflict.
- Here, you will need to encourage:
- Open communication.
- Respectful disagreement.
- Set discussion rules.
- Ensure that everyone feels heard.
Read Also: Work Schedule Apps for Business: A Complete Guide
7. Adapt and Iterate
Knowing how to manage multiple teams also involves mastering the art of adaption and iteration. As per our expertise, even the most thoughtfully planned projects will face obstructions with progress. So, you need to adapt and make the right changes accordingly.
8. Cross-Team Skill Development
Establishing cross-team skill development is an important aspect of cross-team collaboration. It is one of the most effective tips for managing multiple teams, which we implement in our organization as well.
9. Prioritize Employee Development
Knowing how to manage multiple teams also involves knowing the best way to prioritize developing the skills of your employees. When each employee is skilled enough, it adds to more success and growth for your teams.
10. Risk Management
Our experience with the most effective team management strategies also tells us that even the simplest of projects bear risks. Thus the need to focus on handling these issues is key to success. An expert tip here is to use the good old, hope for the best but prepare for the worst mindset.
How to Manage Multiple Teams: Incorporating Key Principals
Other than the above 10 strategies, applying key principles is also essential to master how to manage multiple teams. These 5 key principles are again tried and tested, so you know that they are very useful and practical.
1. Delegation
One of the most essential multi-team management tips is delegation. However, as we mentioned before, it should never be a dictatorship but guidance. The idea is to always distribute authority to team members in such a way that you still have the charge to make the final decisions.
2. Mentorship
No matter how promoted someone is, they always need your expert mentorship to keep moving forward toward success. Especially, when they are mastering how to manage multiple teams, which is a much complex job. However, with the right guidance, it will be very simple and easy.
3. Creativity
One of the most successful team management techniques is to encourage creativity. Especially, in industries such as IT and software development, where out-of-the-box solutions work the best, you need to ensure that:
- There are enough brainstorming sessions to have room for diverse perspectives.
- You reward teams with the best solutions.
- Your teams are comfortable taking calculated risks and experimenting without fear of failure.
4. Team Building
Team building is an essential part of working in teams. Even outside projects and work, your teams must connect to build a stronger rapport. Understanding individuals on professional and personal levels is an essential part of learning how to manage multiple teams as it improves cross-team collaboration.
5. Inspiration
Inspiring teams is one of the best but most complex strategies for managing multiple teams and projects. It is complex because it’s beyond providing compensation and benefits. You also need to:
- Recognize achievements.
- Connect individual work to the overall objective.
- Offer enough opportunities for growth and development.
- Identify signs of burnout and provide effective solutions to retain your employee (s).
Read Also: Top 10 Office Management Software for Your Business
How to Manage Multiple Teams: Top 10 Tools That Simplify This Task
Mastering how to manage multiple teams on both professional and personal levels is the key to success. For the personal level, you are capable enough to implement the best strategies. However, when it comes to the professional part, you need some assistance. So, we shortlisted the top 10 tools that simplify this task.
- DeskTrack
- Clockify
- Asana
- Pumble
- Basecamp
- Plaky
- Helpjuice
- SmartTask
- Worldtime Buddy
- nTask
1. DeskTrack
DeskTrack is the best software for managing multiple teams and projects. Due to its core project management features including task creation, real-time progress tracking, and the capability to know who is doing what and when you will have complete charge of your teams.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $5.99/user/month | Real-time employee monitoring with screenshots | Sensitive information such as passwords is not blurred in screenshot reports |
2. Clockify
Clockify works on 3 core features, employee schedule creation, project progress tracking, and productivity levels monitoring. It’s one of the best tools for tracking work hours and managing diverse teams.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $3.99/user/month | Powerful team reporting capabilities and easy-to-use | Need to upgrade to the paid plan for extra features |
3. Asana
Looking for the best software for product management? We recommend Asana. One of the best tools for managing multiple teams, it lets you handle teams and projects with the Kanban-style drag-and-drop tool and manage products in a timeline or list view. That too in real-time. We don’t think this could get any better.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $10.99/user/month | The files section stores multi-card attached files in one place | Expensive paid plans |
4. Pumble
If we talk about how to manage multiple teams, effective communication and collaboration are at the core. Especially, if the teams are remote. Due to its powerful collaboration features, managing teams of any size becomes simple.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $2.49/user/month | Simple user interface with robust saving and formatting options | Not many virtual background options for video calling |
Read Also: Float Project Management: The Complete Guide
5. Basecamp
When it comes to managing multiple teams and projects for small teams, you can rely on Basecamp. Although it is a simple project management platform, it still gets the job done with features including:
- To-dos
- Docs
- Message boards
- Chats
- Scheduling features
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $15/user/month | Contains all tasks in one big landscape view | The user interface is clunky with too many unnecessary sections |
6. Plaky
A big part of mastering how to manage multiple teams is simultaneously handling projects and tasks. Plaky can assist you in simplifying that because of the unlimited customizations and configurations. However, what makes it unique is the search capabilities, which save a lot of valuable time. For instance:
- You create a tag such as employee monitoring.
- If you want to find tasks with this tag, you simply need to type it in the search bar.
- All tasks marked with this tag will appear instantly.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $3.99/user/month | Customize fields with tasks, to-dos, comments, and more for multiple team sizes | Lacks Gantt charts |
7. Helpjuice
Helpjuice is the software for managing multiple teams and projects you need if you want to create and manage team knowledge bases. Due to its core features, Helpjuice makes it simple for your team members to store, organize, find, and share knowledge. However, it often takes a few seconds for it to load and open articles, which can be frustrating. Especially, when you are on an urgent task.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $120/month for up to 4 users | Feature-rich capabilities including formatting, integrations, and privacy views | Takes some time to load and open articles |
8. SmartTask
Streamlining daily tasks is yet again an essential part of mastering how to manage multiple teams. SmartTask is the tool for that. One of the best for sales teams, it helps you optimize projects, portfolios, and communication in a single platform.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $7.98/user/month | View individual sales analytics for each sales pipeline | Outdated and visually unappealing user interface |
9. Worldtime Buddy
If you have employees spread across numerous countries, then, Worldtime Buddy is one of the best tools for managing multiple teams. What we like about it is how it lets you easily convert between time zones. Overall, it ensures perfect team synchronization between you, your employees, and your clients. However, the outdated user interface is an issue.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| Completely free to use | The customizable interface that helps you hide the weekends | Outdated user interface |
10. nTask
A big part of mastering how to manage multiple teams is also being able to fix issues in the products they create or the services they provide. With nTask, you get intuitive features that not only let you track software issues but also manage meetings from a single platform.
| Cheapest Paid Plan | Top Advantage | Top Disadvantage |
| $3/user/month | Highly affordable | Non-intuitive user interface. Some capabilities are not self-explanatory |
Read Also: 15 Ways to Develop Employee Self-Management Skills
How to Manage Multiple Teams with DeskTrack?
Whether you have to manage one, two, or any no. of teams simultaneously, DeskTrack is the best tool for managing multiple teams.
The employee monitoring software provides you with many features for managing your remote, in-office, and field teams of all sizes including:
- Intuitive user intreface.
- Unlimited projects, tasks, subtasks, and checklist creation as per your requirements.
- Real-time progress tracking with timesheets.
- Automated task timers that increase focus.
- Real-time call tracking, productivity insights, and reporting synchronization.
- An intuitive smartphone app and more.
Conclusion
We hope that now you have wrapped your head around how to manage multiple teams and how essential it is to master it in the modern work world. The first thing that comes to our minds is why such an obvious topic. On the surface, it looks very easy and simple to handle numerous teams. As a manager, you will surely have the skills to manage a team or two. However, handling the pressure while taking various teams to success simultaneously is a lot different. Here, you need more than your team management skills as it comes with various challenges. These include priority conflicts, communication gaps, varying working styles, scattered knowledge, and issues establishing individual accountability. You need to implement the right strategies and tools to handle the pressure and convert the challenges into opportunities. Applying key principles ensures streamlined work and management, which leads to more success and growth.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. How Do You Handle Multiple Teams?
Ans. To simplify simultaneously handling multiple teams, implementing these strategies will help.
- Establish Roles
- Communicate and Collaborate
- Transparency and Visibility Matters
- Employee Empowerment
- Use Project Management Software
- Positively Use Conflicts
- Adapt and Iterate
- Cross-Team Skill Development
- Prioritize Employee Development
- Risk Management
Q. How to Manage Staff in Multiple Locations?
Ans. It’s a no-brainer that managing your staff working across multiple locations and time zones will have its challenges. However, with these strategies, it will be simplified.
- Ensure clear communication
- Set transparent expectations
- Standardize office processes
- Use tools and technology
- Have regular check-ins
- Establish cultural sensitivity
- Implement ample training and development
- Recognize and reward achievements
- Provide a flexible schedule
- Arrange virtual social gatherings
Q. Which are the Best Tools for Managing Multiple Teams?
Ans. To help you choose the best tool to handle multiple teams, we shortlisted the best software solutions for the same.
- DeskTrack
- Clockify
- Asana
- Pumble
- Basecamp
- Plaky
- Helpjuice
- SmartTask
- Worldtime Buddy
- nTask
