Essential Behaviours for Managers
As a General Manager for over 17 years, I know how tough being a manager can be.
Especially if you haven’t got the skills needed to manage, motivate and influence people in your business. Looking back I didn’t always get it right. I didn’t have the knowledge or skills necessary to do a good job as a manager. Over these last ten years since I started my own business I know that there are others out there who also haven’t been given the skills and tools necessary to be a good people manager.
10 actions to help you develop essential behaviours for managers
1. Review your own performance
Accept that you are always in a position to learn from your experiences. Reflection is one of the best ways of accelerating your performance. What went well? What would you do differently, if you could do it again?
2. Ask your team for feedback
Find out what they want from you. Encourage them to tell you what they need from you. Also ask them specifically for feedback about a specific issue or area that you are looking to improve. Encourage them to let you know what’s working for them (and what’s not working.)
3. Develop your self-esteem and self-confidence
As an effective manager its important to recognise your strengths. Do you know what your strengths are and are you getting to use them at least 75% of the working day?
4. Ask questions and listen
Develop the technique of asking open and probing questions to get to the root of the issue. Today’s successful leaders use a coaching style which is collaborative and inclusive. This may mean that you need to accept that other people may have different ideas about how something can be achieved.
5. Give people your full attention
When others are speaking, you will earn their respect as well as learning useful information, if you pay attention to what they have to say. Seems obvious to most people, but surprisingly some managers and leaders think that they have to be the ones to come up with all the good ‘ideas’ and often don’t listen to their team.
6. Acknowledge the efforts of other people
Individuals learn best in environments of high expectation and positive feedback. Not by being told what they have done wrong. Positive psychology is now recognised as one of the best management tools.
7. Build close and dependable relationships
founded on mutual respect. Successful managers know that departmental and cross team relationships are essential to achieving the goals of the business.
8. Monitor performance
Check that everything is on target. Encourage people to monitor and evaluate their own performance. ‘What can be measured can be improved’. Often managers say that they don’t have time to do appraisal meetings. Or nobody likes them. Or they are just a waste of time. This is possibly because they don’t know how to run an effective appraisal interview. This can be one of the most rewarding and valuable periods of time that you give that member of your team.
9. Resist the temptation to complain and blame
If something isn’t right, see what you can do to fix it. Take the initiative to make things better. Don’t just leave it for someone else to ‘fix’. Your behaviour will breed the behaviour in others around you, so pay attention to how you are being a role model to others in your business.
10. Deal effectively with criticism
Ask for clarification and specifics and identify what needs to happen to put the problem right. Differences of opinions are healthy providing that you appreciate that others may have a different point of view to yourself. Successful managers don’t judge others. They question and look to understand why this person may have that idea/ assumption etc. ‘Seek first to understand before you can be understood’. Steven Covey7 Habits of Successful Mangers.
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