Are you striving to be a good manager? Although most employees exhibit natural leadership skills, most won’t impulsively know how to be a good manager.
You learn skills, put in the work, seek training, and then excel over the past few years. Congratulations, your consistency has brought you to an upper step in your career: management. The promotion to management gives you a pay raise though. But is that free money? Of course not. It is not for everyone and isn’t easy, but that’s OK. You’ll grow as a person, take on responsibilities, and encourage others to achieve their potential. In the end, it will be rewarding for you.
Be it marketing, finance, or IT, however else you are succeeding in, you need managing skills in your field. The most important are persuasion, communication, and leadership. Being able to manage your team properly will make it easier to lead your staff and help them towards better solutions. Isn’t a perfect goal for career success?
So, how do you know if are you a competent executive or not? In this article, I’m sharing tips on how to be a good manager which will take you to go down the management path.
7 tips on how to be a good manager
Be a manager that people can follow. It won’t happen overnight but takes wisdom patience, and experience. Developing and improving your managing skills can make a huge difference and you can play a significant role in increasing employee engagement in the workplace. Follow these 7 proven ways to become a good manager.
1. Improve your communication skills
You should communicate effectively so employees can respect you and take you seriously. Whenever you handle a task, manage a difficult situation, and give away feedback to the team, it all comes down to your communication skills. No substitute for good communication if you want to become a better manager! Learn how to communicate effectively.
Make your tone nice, helpful, and motivating. You need to share the goals diligently with your team and help them achieve targets especially when you face challenging days where achieving goals is the only thing on your mind. In the entire process of managing, do not forget to be kind.
“Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say, nothing to add. In addition to giving up control of all the work, as a boss, you’ll also have to break the addiction to being right all of the time. Don’t always promote your own view.”
Shtull
2. Practice self-awareness
Successful managers know that managing others doesn’t show they know everything. If you want to be an effective manager, you must adopt an attitude of learning and growing alongside your team. There is a way to learn leadership skills so you can build upon self-awareness, time management, and delegation. You should also learn how to conserve your energy for the most important projects.
It’s totally OK if you don’t know everything, that’s not your job. Display this to your team so that you can mess up things sometimes. Try laughing at a silly joke, try showing them you are not perfect. Being a good executive is not about becoming a beyond-the-horizon figure. Your job is to understand how you relate to people by practicing self-awareness.
“Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.”
Lawrence Bossidy
3. Grow your leadership skills
Are you mindful of your behavior being a manager? You must be apprehensive of the message you send to your employees.
A good leader recognizes both the intentional and unintentional effects you have on others. This is an analytical part of good management when you set much of your tone and culture for the firm. Good management of any organization includes many moving parts, so being a leader you need to be consistent self-reflective, and innovative. Learning something new regularly will help you work toward being the best leader you want to be.
As management demands that business decisions should be made on the go, and if you manage the team well, they will carry the message effectively over to employees. Effective managers have to move in tandem, so your firm will adapt, remain competitive, and survive all the uncertain times.
“Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, raising a person’s performance to a higher standard, and building a personality beyond its normal limitations.”
Peter Drucker
4. Build positive relationships
Building positive relationships can make your job as a manager easier. Remember, there is no need to act overly chummy, but being approachable and friendly can work wonders for you and your team’s performance. Appreciate your staff always. When it comes to productivity, a bit of encouragement is much better than a caffeine fix according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School. When you praise employees, it will boost their efficiency by 50%. You should also highlight their efforts by creating an award for employee of the month’ during team meetings. Doing this will motivate other team members too.
Building team spirit and holding regular meetings will upgrade the track of team performance and reward success in the end. Try to have an open-door policy in your office. Make your staff comfortable to pop into your office. It will support a collaborative environment.
“Feeling gratitude for other people raises our own vibration, while adding cement to the bricks we lay.”
Alaric Hutchinson
5. Help employees navigate change
When was the last time you navigate change within your organization? Are you willing to bet on the change that feels intimidating at change? Fortunately, good management tackles the negative or ambivalent emotions that come from change.
If you’re the strongest administrator, you’d be able to help your team traverse change in a very personal way. You’ll see that every challenge will present an opportunity. So, because your management is effective, you’d always see the opportunity from the start.
“Strong managers can translate change for each individual on their team. They meet their teammate where they’re at and help to answer their questions and concerns to bring them to where they need to go.”
How can you navigate change? Start experiencing psychological safety to make your employees feel comfortable. You can take their views on how they feel about a particular business change. Try listen to them carefully. Don’t forget that their concerns and work can provide solutions for major issues.
6. Be fair
A good leader is always fair and treats his team members equally. Favoritism can result in offense, resentment, rebellion, and even depression. Employees feel more motivated, valued, and engaged in working when they know they all have equal opportunities.
It is found in a study named “11 Essential Traits of Great Managers”, that employees today endeavor just treatment by a manager. A responsible boss never makes biased decisions in his organization. So, you must think of assessing the performance fairly and giving promotions to those who truly deserve it.
When managers treat employees fairly, it can result in higher satisfaction of employees and turn stronger efforts to get things done. Employees should also outlook their managers as supportive counselors and feel properly involved in decision-making.
“Fairness is man’s ability to rise above his prejudices.”
Wes Fesler
7. Promote psychologically-safe environments
Management includes genuine empathy and psychological safety. You should master it before considering the management path. Psychological safety fosters a positive mindset and looks after the employees’ ability to adapt well to change.
Being a manager you must know how to identify management points of view of style and overall office culture that can promote psychological safety. Have a supportive dialogue instead of using language that makes employees feel scared of missing targets. When a team member faces trouble with a task, you should provide assistance to help them. It will allow them not only to learn from mistakes but grow as employees as well.
“Feeling supported, heard, and understood is the foundation I need to be able to come to work every day with the right mindset to do good work.”
Brault
READ: Benefits Of Time Management
