Why you need to build a team to get ahead

If you want to advance in your company, here is a surprising tip: don’t spend all your time looking to your leaders and supervisors for opportunities to advance. Instead, look to the team you manage.

Guiding a team is a chance to improve your own abilities and your own chances for advancement.

How?

You learn people skills. Every employee you manage has different skills and work ethic. They will differ in personality and in quality of work. There will be some you can foster into good workers just by encouraging them. And there will be others with whom you will need to be firm. When you focus your efforts on guiding your team, you will develop an eye for judging people.

You learn vicariously. Sometimes, you will supervise others on tasks that you yourself have never been asked to accomplish. This is an opportunity to learn through the trial and error of those you supervise. When you are responsible for their output, you’ll learn their skills as well as your own.

You will take your own job more seriously. You will develop new skills when you begin managing individuals or a team. Managers have a greater sense of responsibility because they no longer are in full control of the work output. The more successful your team, the greater the chance you will advance.

Managing is work, to be sure, but it is also an opportunity to learn and grow. Managed well, those below you may be your ticket to advancement.

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Hiroshi Mikitani is CEO, Rakuten Inc.

Image: Businessmen and visitors enjoy the good weather on the stairs under the Arche de la Defense in the financial district of la Defense near Paris April 30, 2009.   REUTERS/Charles Platiau