Be an Effective Manager

What makes some managers successful, while others struggle to survive in the position? Although each situation is different, effective managers share common traits. They build trust with employees by being consistent and honest. They are excellent communicators who can motivate their employees by setting appropriate goals. As a manager, it’s easy to burrow in your own office. Accordingly, you’ll need to make sure that you stay connected to your team.

Steps

Building Trust

1. Strive for consistency. People will feel more comfortable once they see you as a known quantity. If you are unpredictable, they will keep information from you out of fear. Instead, be predictable. Be steady.
   • Employees also won’t trust you if you show favoritism. If you punish someone for breaking a rule, you need to punish others who break the same rule.
2. Value transparency. Employees won’t trust you if they think you have a hidden agenda. Accordingly, you need to be open with them. Share information as soon as you can. Always be truthful.
   • Never lie. Team members talk, and if you say one thing to Janet but another thing to John, they’ll find out you are a liar.
   • You should also avoid withholding information. For example, if the company is performing poorly, then you should be upfront with your team. There’s no reason to sugarcoat information.
   • You can’t share everything. For example, if you fire someone, you shouldn’t tell the team why. However, transparency should be your default option.
3. Follow through on your promises. If you say you will do something, do it. If you ask for people’s opinions, then listen actively to what they say. You’ll lose your team’s trust if you say one thing but do another.
   • The key to following through is not overpromising. For example, if you can’t get a team member promoted, don’t promise that you will.
   • You might want to make few promises initially, at least until you become comfortable in the role.
4. Get things done. Your team will trust your leadership once they see that you are someone who gets results. The longer your track record of success, the better.
   • Occasionally, you may need to get your hands dirty and help out when the team is overwhelmed. Show that you are as committed to the team’s success as they are.
5. Give credit to others. Don’t claim something was your idea if you relied, even in part, on someone else’s ideas. Instead, credit the person who contributed and acknowledge how you built on their idea.
   • For example, you can say, “I met with the company president and shared with him Janet’s ideas on a new marketing campaign.” Say this even if Janet’s contribution was small. People will trust you when they see you aren’t trying to steal their credit.
6. Avoid gossip. Any group of three people gossips—two people will talk about the third. However, you should strive to avoid the gossip vine. If you get pulled into your team’s gossip, you won’t look like a leader.
   • Nevertheless, you should be aware of gossip. Let your secretary or assistant keep you appraised of what is happening.
   • In particular, pay attention if team members are working to sabotage you.

Communicating Effectively

1. Listen. Listening is as important as what you say. If you are in a team meeting, you should probably listen to your employees before speaking yourself. To become a skilled listener, get rid of any distractions. Put away your phone or tablet, and don’t glance back over your shoulder to your computer screen. Instead, focus on the person who is talking.
   • As you listen, focus on body language, which contains important cues. Someone who claims to be happy while sitting with their arms crossed is saying one thing but signaling another.
   • Also tend to your own body language as you listen. Practice sitting still and listening to people share bad news. It’s important not to snap back in response.
2. Encourage others to participate. You never know where you best ideas will come from, so you should encourage team members to voice their opinions. Give people many outlets for sharing their ideas. Not everyone likes to talk in meetings, so welcome people to share ideas via email or in individual meetings with you.
   • Remember not to make fun of someone for their ideas, even if those ideas are unoriginal or poorly thought out. If you knock someone for voicing an opinion, you are sending a message that people should keep their ideas to themselves.
   • Also ensure everyone can participate. This may mean reining in any team member who is overly negative or is trying to dominate the conversation. Say something like, “Gregg, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I definitely hear you. Now, I’d like to hear from Sonia and Marie.”
3. Be clear. Effective communication is clear and thorough. Strive to be as clear as possible to minimize misunderstandings. Think before you reach out to someone else and make sure you know what you want to say.
   • Balance thoroughness with brevity. You don’t need to take up everyone’s time with endless emails or team memos. Get to the point.
4. Use email carefully. Email is incredibly convenient. You can pop off a written note to a team member at any time of the day and retain a copy of your communication. However, it’s difficult to read someone’s tone in an email. For example, you might send an email intended as a joke which the recipient perceives is hostile.
   • No modern business can survive without email. However, use it strategically.
   • For example, you should avoid email if you are having a difficult relationship with one team member. Instead, communicate face to face so that they can read your non-verbal cues.
5. Minimize your use of meetings. Meetings often take longer than necessary. If possible, communicate in other ways. If you do hold a meeting, draft a schedule and distribute it ahead of time. Stick to it as much as possible.
   • Sometimes, you need to have meetings, and an effective manager can identify those times. Don’t hold a meeting when you can send a memo instead.
   • However, hold meetings to brainstorm, or when you want to hear your employees’ perspective.
6. Provide effective feedback. As a manager, you are also a coach. You need to provide guidance to your team members so that they can perform at their best level. Tailor your feedback to each team member’s communication styles and motivation.
   • Ideally, however, you will balance negative feedback with praise.
   • Also follow up negative feedback with concrete advice. Don’t say, “Maybe focus harder.” Instead, show an employee how they can manage their workflow, or put them in touch with someone who can help them.
   • Remember your company’s employee assistance program (EAP). You aren’t a therapist tasked with helping an employee sort out their personal life. However, you can encourage them to contact the EAP and schedule a counseling session.
7. Communicate across all levels of the organization. In your early days as a manager, make it your goal to get out and meet everyone in the organization who directly or indirectly affects your team. Walk around the building and introduce yourself to people. Ask questions about their department.
   • Communicating broadly helps in two ways. First, you’ll get to know who you should contact whenever you need help. For example, you might find out that an assistant wields all of the power in Human Resources. They can be your go-to person.
   • Second, you’ll build rapport with people, who might go the extra mile to help you when you need it.
8. Dress the part. Communication is also non-verbal. Maintain your credibility in the eyes of your team, which means looking like the manager on your team. Aim to dress slightly more professional than your team members.
   • If your employees dress casual, you should dress business casual.
   • If your employees dress business casual, then wear a suit to work.
9. Don’t obsess about being “nice.” The sign of a novice manager is a fear that your team won’t like you. In fact, they should respect you, not be your best friend. If you’re too nice, employees may slack off, knowing they have nothing to fear.
   • You don’t gain much by being “hard as nails,” either. Instead, aim to show empathy. Remember that “kindness,” not “niceness,” is what is important.
10. Overcome shyness. Shy people can certainly be effective managers. However, you need to work deliberately to counteract your shyness. Consider the following tips:
    • Get to know team members in a way that feels comfortable. For example, you might want to schedule one-on-one meetings in your office at first. Write a short agenda that will give you something to refer to if you feel tongue-tied.
    • Prepare properly. Employees tend to question business decisions, so arm yourself with facts ahead of time to explain the decision you’ve made. This will help you speak authoritatively.
    • Lean on mentors to help you. Find someone higher up to coach you on challenging tasks, such as Handle Difficult Employees, managing workplace conflicts, and disciplining under-performing employees.
    • Be yourself. You’re shy—and that’s okay. You don’t need to pretend to be a standup comic. Instead, be yourself. If you’re consistent, your team will come around to appreciate your management style.

Motivating Your Team

1. Lead by example. You can’t realistically expect your team members to outperform you. Accordingly, you need to be a conscientious employee yourself. To get the best results, model hard work and the right way to interact with people.
   • Also acknowledge your mistakes. You’ll earn respect from your employees and create a culture in which others aren’t afraid to approach you when they mess up.
2. Create individual and team goals. Both are important. If you create only individual goals, then you’ll damage team cohesion. If you set only team goals, then individual team members won’t know where they fit into the larger picture.
   • Goals for individual team members should be challenging but still something the employee can achieve. Also make sure the goals are measurable. Something like “bring in more clients” isn’t a good goal. Instead, provide a bench mark: “Increase number of new clients by 50% in a year.”
   • Remember to involve your team on setting the team’s goals. Of course, you can’t let the team set the goals all alone, but make sure you tell them how you have incorporated their ideas.
3. Reward hard work. If you want to get outstanding effort, you need to reward it. Your reward can be small—a gift card to a nearby coffee shop—or it can be more substantial, such as a bonus. Whatever you give is beside the point: the key is to recognize the effort.
   • Sometimes the only reward necessary is public recognition. Tell the other employees about the great job Sue and Steve did on a client presentation.
   • Remember to be consistent when giving rewards. If you reward one team member for bringing in a client, you can’t overlook another team member who does the same.
4. Tailor your management style to each employee. No two members of your team are alike. Accordingly, you shouldn’t use the same management style with each employee. Instead, find out what makes each team member tick.
   • For example, some team members might be overconfident and need to be challenged regularly.
   • By contrast, other members might lack confidence and do their best work when they receive praise.
5. Inspire employees. Strive to make even the lowliest member feel that their job is crucial to the team’s success. Most people yearn to be part of something larger than themselves, and they find meaning in helping the group accomplish its goals.
   • Don’t just tell employees you value them (though that is important). Also explain to them why their job is crucial to the team’s success.
6. Deal with underperforming employees. Avoid spending a lot of time trying to improve a weak employee. Generally, you’ll never be able to make them better than they currently are. Instead, tell them what they need to do to keep their job and give them a deadline for meeting your expectations.
   • If you need to fire someone, remember to follow your organization’s policies to the letter. There’s logic behind all that paperwork you have to fill out. You’ll sleep better at night knowing you fired someone in the right way.
   • Also pay attention to how the termination affects those team members left behind. Talk about the firing. Even though you can’t explain in detail why you let someone go, you can put your team at ease that you aren’t downsizing for economic reasons.

Staying Connected to the Team

1. Say “hello.” It’s simple, it’s painless, but it’s also a good way to stay connected. You might be so stressed and busy that you retreat into a shell. Taking time to acknowledge other team members can reap great rewards.
2. Get out of your office. It can be very easy as a manager to lock yourself up in your office. Soon, you won’t really understand what is happening on your own team. Get your finger back on the pulse by getting out of your office. Stop by people’s cubicles to chat.
   • Remember that the goal is not to make “friends.” Feel free to chat about shared interests and people’s lives outside of work. However, your goal as a manager is not to get people to like you.
   • Instead, ask how their work is going and if they need anything from you.
3. Help your team members stay connected. Your employees will also benefit from interacting with each other in unstructured ways. Tolerate employees spending a few minutes chatting with each other at the water cooler or in the break room.
4. Schedule a meal together. A team lunch or dinner is a great reward for employees. It also helps you stay connected as a team. Try to schedule a team meal at least quarterly.
   • If you want, you can do something else as a team—play paintball or go to a movie. Make sure it is something fun that all team members will enjoy.
5. Delegate. Doing everything yourself is a great way to get cut off from the team. Instead, you should parcel out tasks to employees. Remember that something doesn’t have to be done perfectly.
   • You’ll benefit enormously from delegating. For example, you’ll get to assess your employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you’ve found a new right-hand assistant.
   • You’ll also reduce your own stress load, thus making you a better and happier manager.

Quick Summary

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See also

• Create a Productive Working Environment
• Be Appointed to a Board of Directors
• Become a Better and Effective Team Leader
• Set Up an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Retain Good Employees
• Be an Artist Manager
• Build a Management Team
• Use an In Basket
• Write an Employee Handbook
• Plan an Employee Retreat

Read more ...

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