The role of a manager is critical for any organisation. The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the most common reasons employees leave an organisation is due to an issue with their manager.
With good managers, the company can function smoothly.
The team can make better progress with good managers. On the other hand, bad management reduces employee efficiency and the quality of work.
Skills such as effective communication, on-time delivery, and better writing are things an employer looks for when hiring an employee. When it comes to a manager skill set, there are many other essential qualities that separate a good manager from the rest.
In this blog, we’ve broken down some of the core skills that managers should focus on in order to prove themselves to be effective leaders.
Vision is the reason why we humans have expanded our horizons.
Anything and everything that’s around us exists because of someone’s vision for a better future.
Having a visionary outlook is a core quality that defines a strong leader. A visionary manager can well differentiate between the important and less important tasks. This leads to better team direction and more focused work.
A good manager is one who is not only aligned with the company’s vision but also has his/her own vision for the company’s success.
This quality enables a manager to make their team members stay on the right path and achieve challenging tasks.
Being organised means being orderly and slotting things into the right place. Organised managers are those who rely on an outcome-based system. They make sure that their team members communicate effectively. Furthermore, they ensure that the team doesn’t have to waste time on less important tasks, emails and edits.
Delegation is also a key part of organisational skills, because a good manager knows how to play each team member to their strengths. As a manager, you must make the process as simple as possible — for that you can take the help of productivity and project management tools that boost productivity and are also time-efficient.
Creativity is another universal skill that employers seek when hiring an employee. Being creative as a manager works wonders for the whole organisation.
You’re a creative person if you focus on finding solutions to problems; coming up with ideas to make work more efficient and that help the company gain more profits.
One quality that employees value most about their managers is being supportive. A good manager focuses on providing value and knowledge to the candidates working in their team.
You need to become the driving force behind the progress of your team members.
Trust in the workplace plays a huge role in elevating teamwork. If an employee feels trustworthy, they are more likely to complete their work at a high standard and on time.
However, trusting your team be a little complicated.
Trust doesn’t mean you blindly hand over tasks to your members and hope for the best! Your job as a trusting manager is to give employees the space to work autonomously while still providing motivation and guidance when needed.
This way you’ll be able to gauge what each employee is capable of achieving, identify their areas of improvement, and help them develop in their careers (without micromanaging!).
Many organisations expect managers to provide positive feedback to keep up employee morale, but the right approach is to provide constructive feedback that will help employees grow.
Constructive feedback represents good intention where the manager corrects the staff in the area where they can improve. This helps the individual to grow both personally and professionally.
A constructive feedback approach can include providing moral support to the team, clearing the confusion on the team’s expectations, and giving honest opinions on their performance.
The economic optimism of CEOs is falling substantially every quarter.
Optimism is often underestimated in the workplace. Work stress is inevitable, but even the slightest positive action taken by managers in the workplace on a regular basis can keep the employees at ease — for instance, celebrating team wins and giving weekly prizes to well-performing employees.
If managers don’t make a conscious effort to create a positive atmosphere, the situation can get worse — leaving team members with burnout and discontentment.
Hence, it is very crucial for a manager to have an optimistic way of handling the worst situation, at least most of the time if not always.
Leadership doesn’t mean you get to boss people around. True leaders create a good work environment where each team member has the liberty to ask questions, disagree openly and trust their co-workers.
A good leader is someone who is kind to their team and listens to their perspectives in all situations.
When you feel things are getting out of control, you can deal with the problem through a team discussion. This will help everyone lay their cards on the table and help them deal with frustrations or anger through clear and honest conversation with each other.
Favouritism resists team spirit. Yes, you may like the work of some individuals better than the rest, but even in such a situation expressing your true opinion may do more harm than good, and you would be mistaken as an unfair manager.
To avoid this, you need to create boundaries and maintain professionalism without giving anyone special treatment or preference at work, or at events like team lunches or office parties.
A strong team can find solutions to any challenging project. Creativity and teamwork bring out the best performance especially for the younger people working in your organisation.
Over 88% of millennials prefer collaboration in the workplace instead of competition. — Premier Global Service
Employees prefer being a part of a team and working collaboratively. Some approaches that work well for team building are brainstorming, team discussion, and finding reliable solutions.
In order to build an effective team, you should facilitate activities that help them get to know each other and their strengths.
As a manager, you should also keep an eye out for project management tools like Trello and Slack, which are excellent for team communication and task management.
You can’t control or have the leverage to look into small matters. That’s why it’s better to have a macromanagement approach instead of micromanaging your employees.
Macromanagement is the total opposite of micromanagement. This approach requires you to look into crucial tasks and their progress without spending time on minor daily tasks — you can entrust that work to your team members.
Macromanagement requires you to trust your co-workers to get the job done.
This style of management can open space for autonomy, creativity and a healthy working environment for everyone in the team.
Managing a workforce is not an easy task and that’s why the role of managers is so vital for companies. If you want to set the example of a good leader, this article lists beneficial skills for you.
These skills can be developed over time, and will be best achieved with some planning on your part. Write down the skills you feel you already have, along with the skills you want to develop. Then, set goals for yourself to invest in resources to learn and start practicing a new skillset.
With time you’ll be able to implement your new skills at the organisation with ease and professionalism.
Ankit Thakor is a marketer by trade and a football player by passion. He is a SaaS Marketing Specialist at SoftwareWorld. He specialises in using compelling content to capture consumer dollars for world-class SaaS brands, including Zoho, Freshworks, ClickUp, and more. You can reach him on Twitter, Linkedin and Quora.
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