All great minds think alike, and so do great managers when it comes to managing their teams and employees. So what is the secret sauce that allows for world class team performance? It has nothing to do with numbers, tools, software, or latest business fads. It all boils down to the soft skills. Here are 5 ingredients to kick start your managerial skills along with team performance:

1. Motivation: find out what makes your employees tick, and then once thats done, use it to boost their motivation level in a way that will encourage them to use their strengths for the task at hand.

2. Goal Setting: Its not only important for you as their manager or leader to know the company vision or project vision. Its important to communicate this from the onset and to constantly direct that towards the goal. Make them feel like they are part of the business and not merely hired hands.

3. Praise: It is in peoples nature to want to be appreciated, show your appreciation from anything as simple as a verbal acknowledgement to a bonus in pay.

4. Feedback: provide constructive criticism as necessary but be sure to throw in some great praise in between for the good points and the potential you see your employees reaching.

5. Management: have an open door policy in general; make yourself a resource and not just a manager of human resources. Become a model of that performance from which you want your employees and team to achieve.

Simple right? So is creating a fitness regimen, easy on paper, trickier in practice. But the more you do it, the better you become for yourself, for your employees, and for your business.