Every organization has grown from the leadership of a single manager. Divergence is inevitable unless a manager leads a group of highly motivated employees towards a specific goal. Emerging managers should concentrate on balancing the multiple crucial characteristics required and avoid common pitfalls in managing people. These pitfalls range from issues relating to team meetings, working environment development, encouragement of employees, and goal setting.
A manager plays a strategic role in understanding the needs of the stakeholders, such as investors, venture capitalists, and others. They operate as a medium through which employees are directed towards specific objectives to help bring focus to a particular team-oriented goal. Understanding and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of employees facilitate HR and managers to develop growth-oriented programs focused on these objectives. The article explores these aspects and guides entrepreneurs, employees, and management students to be good managers.
How to be a good manager
Empathy, understanding, and the ability to analyze a pool of employees and leverage them in a business are essential characteristics of a good manager. Gallup surveyed 80,000 managers and recognized the single factor defining a good manager—recognizing subordinates' uniqueness and capitalizing on their strengths. Great managers do not pay heed to gender, age, race, nationality, and other factors, celebrate their subordinates, and motivate all their employees.
Traits of good managers
A good manager must have the following characteristics:
- Communication skills
- Transparency
- Time management
- Delegation
- Reliability
Communication skills
Communication provides employees clarity on the company's vision that they share with the executives in the organization. In the process of communicating the vision and mission, utilization of both verbal and non-verbal techniques of communication must be initiated.
Combining these methods ensures that documentation and actual interactivity towards the overall mission is being asserted. These types of strategies make it easier for there to be a consistent realignment of the mindset of employees toward business objectives to the manager.
Transparency
Communication also helps bring the team together and solve internal conflicts. Good managers encourage transparency in a team. They show concern for their employees' physical and mental well-being. They treat all their employees fairly and take responsibility for them at their place of work. This empowers their employees and makes them reliable and responsible.
Time management and delegation
Time management is an important characteristic that helps managers understand the time required by the employees for a specific task. This directly helps in making it easier for work distribution to take place.
Reliability
Reliability is a specific characteristic that good managers are able to understand. This is important to observe a higher level of conduct in a business. Managers focus on ensuring that all of the employees are in alignment with ethical and legal aspects so that no unwanted activity occurs.
Managing different types of employees
The question of ‘how to be a good manager?’ is only satisfied when a manager forms good relationships with their team and removes conflicts between members. A good manager's job is to create a healthy relationship with their team, resolve conflicts, and understand their personal goals. A manager should help employees align their goals with the business so that the organization grows along with the employee.
Managers can group their employees into categories such as pioneers, drivers, indicators, and guardians. Pioneers are outgoing and spontaneous, while drivers are logical and competitive. A good manager can assign pioneers field duties and use drivers in analytical positions. The indicators are diplomatic and relationship-oriented, and the manager can use their help in dealing with the management. Finally, guardians are organized and detail-oriented individuals. Managers can leverage them to create internal curricula for various projects.
Tips on becoming a better manager
- Showing empathy, positive energy, and trusting employees with different projects helps employees trust the manager. Effective management and good goal setting can be attained much faster through a positive mindset.
- Communicating effectively with employees can make them feel heard and respected. Communication is also important with clients, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
- Practicing delegation to modern tools can increase work efficiency. These can help you become effective in your approach to control teams.
- To be able to operate as a better manager, focus on having constructive conversations with employees. Providing personal feedback is important as it directly helps in improvement aspects to be explored. Employee growth can be achieved in a much smaller time frame.
- Managers can use psychological tactics and interview processes to evaluate which monetary and nonmonetary types of rewards can be provided to employees so that they are much more motivated to work towards business goals.
Mistakes a good manager should avoid
Leaders can make crucial mistakes when cracking the formula on how to be a good manager.
- Micromanagement. It can lead to feelings of manipulation, exhaustive communication, and unclear expectations.
- Poor planning. This affects productivity and stops employees from reaching their full potential and retaining their jobs.
- Interpersonal conflict and verbal arguments with employees. An understanding approach must be initiated at all times.
- Giving unnecessary work to employees. It only overburdens them and results in higher levels of stress.
How to manage remote teams
In a post-pandemic world, managers need to change their attitude towards working with employees. Employee expectations have changed. Many executives are confused about how to be a good manager. They must understand when employees are available for work. Unrealistic expectations of having employees on duty all the time can create problems. Therefore, managers must develop key performance indicators such as work standards and deliver on deadlines.
Moreover, managers should provide virtual training programs on how to interact through email, chat, etc. Apart from this, establishing trust with employees on the phone and through video calls is important to help subordinates stay connected with the business.
How to hire good managers
HR leaders must look for the following traits when hiring a good manager for the organization:
- Trust is the most significant factor in a good manager. HR leaders can study body language, loyalty towards business objectives, the desire to operate in a specific industry, and other factors to evaluate trust.
- On-the-job assessment can be assessed through a single-day evaluation of how a manager works with a team and acquiring feedback from the members. This can help evaluate a manager's reliability while working with team members.
- A manager consistently creates an ethical workplace environment. He is able to question employees on integrity and make sure that compliance attitudes and the consideration for a positive environment are always present.
- When hiring, transparency is a big factor that should be present in a manager. Being able to clearly communicate about past projects that have been successful and discussing pitfalls is important to showcase how transparent a manager is. This directly helps in showing how critical the individual is as well.
Development opportunities for managers
Teamwork, focus on creating worthwhile projects and executing objectives that empower the company's work culture are common methods that growth-oriented managers can use. This is relevant in today’s time to ensure that a high-impact environment is being created at all times. Managers today can use various platforms to develop programs for the business.
Managers require skills ranging from planning organizational objectives to removing personal problems of employees and helping them execute projects. The 360-degree perspective that managers need dictates the effectiveness of their strategies in a business. Unless managers can operate in multiple capacities, the chances of failure increase. Thus, juggling multiple roles and coordinating with employees above all other aspects ensures business when operating as a manager.
