Leadership can be one of the hardest things to get right when it comes to business. When lots of people come looking to you for an answer, it is important you can come up with the most effective solution to a problem as quickly as possible. The only problem is while lots of people are relying on you to tell them what to do, there are probably very few people you can turn to for help in a situation like this if you are towards the top of the management structure. Luckily, there is a lot of ways technology can help you out of a lot of these situations and help you become a better leader. Here is a look at some of the ways technology can help you improve your business leadership skills such as taking a masters in leadership online course.

Further your education

Once you have left school or college, you might think that is the end of your time in education. You can easily return to college and study many different degrees online without attending any physical classes. For example, you can take a masters in leadership online course from anywhere in the country by simply attending classes and completing assignments online. If you already feel like you have got a lot on your plate leading a team, you might think that you simply do not have time to complete a masters in leadership online course alongside your work and personal life. The reality is these courses do not take too long to complete, with many of them simply taking an academic year to teach you everything you need to know and get you qualified. Another great thing about a masters in leadership online course is you can learn in your own time. Unlike traditional college, with a masters in leadership online you do not have to attend any classes in person at awkward times of the way. Instead, you choose when you complete many of the aspects of the degree, where you complete them, and even what you are doing while you complete them. If you have a long commute on public transport every morning, you could find you could better use this time completing this course while sitting on a train or a bus rather than simply flicking through social media.

By completing a masters in leadership online course, you will learn lots of skills, including how to mentor new recruits, keep on top of what your employees are doing, and even work with teams remotely. The latter of those tasks is seemingly becoming increasingly important as business becomes global and more and more of us are working in offices or even our different homes across the world. On top of this, these degrees will teach you more about how to gain trust, work ethically, and motivate a team. One of the big advantages of learning these skills through a degree program is that you will have something to show for it once you have completed the course. If you decide you want to change jobs in the future or apply for a promotion, a masters in leadership online course will look impressive on any resume. It will show that you are passionate about furthering your skills and will happily put the effort in to improve your productivity within a team. While many degrees like basic qualifications in Math and English are necessary for most jobs, a degree like this could be the cherry on top of the cake that makes you stand out from other candidates when going for a new job.

Keep on track of your team’s progress

When you are leading a team, it is important not just to keep an eye on your own workload. It is also important to keep an eye on the workload of the colleagues that you manage. If they get behind on their work, it will cause you just as many problems as if you got behind on one of your many assignments. That is why it is so important to keep track of your teams’ progress as often as possible. The earlier you catch any potential problems or delays that might mean your team may fail to complete a task effectively before a deadline, the more chance you have of being able to do something about it. If you simply leave it until a few days until the deadline, or you even leave it up to your employees to contact you to say there is a problem, you might find that simply too much time has passed to go back and correct the problem before a set deadline.

To make sure this never happens, there are lots of ways you can monitor your teams progress quickly while using technology. For example, if your colleagues are all working on one shared hard drive, whether that be a physical device or an online cloud system, make sure you also have access to that device. That way, you can simply open any files in progress to check that enough work is being completed that you are confident they will reach the deadline. You will also be able to check that you are happy with the quality of the work being completed, so you can stop any time being spent on any bad ideas that you would have ended up telling your team to redo once they presented the final product.

You can also keep track of the individual progress of each employee from the comfort of your desk. For example, if you work in sales, make sure each employee records the sales they have made at the end of a certain period, whether every week or even every day. That way, as long as you can access that document and as long as it is updated regularly, you can spot which employees are selling enough to reach their targets by the end of the month and which are going to struggle. Of course, if you spot someone who is lagging on their sales target, it’s important to meet with them to see how you can help them improve their sales tactics to make sure they achieve their goals. It is also important that you keep an eye on your best-performing employees as well, as if they reach their monthly goal within a few weeks, they may be tempted to take their foot off the gas and be less productive at work. As you are still paying them for the whole month, even if they achieve their goal within a few weeks, it is important that you can check that they are putting as much effort into every single day. Encourage them to further their skills by taking a masters in leadership online if they have the potential and drive to advance their careers.

Drop-in on as many meetings as possible

Another way technology is having a big impact on the way we work is how we meet up and collaborate with other colleagues and clients. In the offices of most big businesses, there would be boardrooms dedicated to important meetings. They would be set up with enough chairs, enough desk space, and maybe even a sound system and big display to make sure everyone in the room can see and hear every presentation being given. For years, most people have presumed the best and only way to have these meetings are to get everyone together in the same big room. Over the last few years, many people have been ditching the physical meeting room to favor a lot more modern option.

Instead of meeting face to face, encourage your team to hold more meetings on web conferencing software like Zoom, Skype, or Microsoft Teams. The major advantage of this system is you can quickly meet with anybody, no matter where they are in the world and how busy their schedule is. Instead of wasting time traveling to a different office, people can simply join the meeting with a simple click of a button from their laptop or smartphone. Another big advantage to this is that you do not need any of the microphones, large screens or even a big enough room to be able to hold this meeting, saving any business a lot of money in the process.

Once your colleagues are set up on a video conferencing software, it also means that it is a lot easier for you to drop in on meetings to check the progress of your teams. All you need is the code for the room, and you can be in the meeting within seconds. Make sure you attend as many meetings in this way as possible. Not only will it allow you to check that your colleagues are doing what they are supposed to be doing, it also allows you to help shape any ideas from the very beginning of the process. This makes it a lot easier to influence the project than trying to salvage a good compromise from what they have been doing unsupervised.

Allow them an easy way to contact you with concerns

One of the hardest parts of leading a team is that you feel like you have to be in multiple places simultaneously. While things like a masters in leadership online course can teach you all the ways in which you can help your team complete work to the very best of their ability, it cannot allow you to be in two places at once. That means when you are spending time with one section of your team, it can quite easily feel like you are neglecting another part of your team. You may even worry that something might go wrong with that team you are not spending time with, which could, in turn, cause big disruptions to your business.

If you tried to spend time overseeing every one of your colleagues every day, it is highly likely that you simply would not have enough time to delve deep into conversation and discussion about what they are doing. There will also be times where you simply need to complete your own work in your office and do not have time to monitor any of your team’s progress. That is why it is so important to make sure your team has lots of easy options to contact you in case of an emergency. Ensure they know the easiest way to contact you, whether that is ringing the landline on your desk, ringing your smartphone, dropping you an email, or even messaging you via text or WhatsApp.

Ensure they feel confident in contacting you no matter how minor the problem may seem. If a colleague is reluctant to tell you about something over concerns about how you will react, whether it is out of anger that an incident has happened or out of annoyance that they havecontacted you over something so silly, it could mean that you do not learn about important incidents. When problems like this happen, no matter how small they are, it is important to know about them as soon as possible. When picking up the phone or replying to a message from a colleague, always let them know that you appreciate them letting you know and that they should get in touch again if they have any concerns in the future.

Check they are keeping up with the very basics

When it comes to leading a team, one of the most frustrating yet most important parts of being a manager is to make sure your team is well disciplined. You can learn how to manage this through taking a masters in leadership online. To make sure your team are completing work to the best of their ability at their job, it is first important to make sure that they are showing up on time for their job. Software like Microsoft Outlook can show you exactly when a colleague has logged on. This means if your team are all supposed to be logged on at 9am in the morning, you can easily see exactly who has not made it to their desk on time by looking through the color-coded statuses in your contact’s book. This system will let you know if one of your employees has been away from their desk for a long time, whether that is because they are taking extra-long lunch breaks or doing something else, which means they avoid completing their important tasks for the day.