Do you feel that your employees lack the drive necessary to put in longer hours and bring in more clients or increase profits? Do you wonder how you can improve your management style to inspire your workers and push them to achieve more? If you’re wondering how to be a good manager and set your company apart from competitors, there are a number of tips you’ll need to consider implementing in order to become a more effective leader for your organization.
Remember, there are ways to improve your management style. You’ll be happy to learn that you can apply a number of lessons to boost your skills as a manager and leader at your company. When searching for how to be a good manager, follow the steps outlined below.
1. Improve Your Communication Skills
One of the most important skills you will have as a manager of a team is to communicate effectively with your workforce. It is vital for you to be able to communicate your vision and plan for anything and everything ranging from a simple project to the future of your company.
Good communication skills are also vital for motivating people and helping drive them to achieve more at their job. This is a surefire way to get your workforce to put in more effort and hours to boost profit and bring in more customers or clients. Motivation works if you also clearly explain what you’re looking for and your desires for the future of your organization. By practicing your communication skills more, you’ll be able to improve greatly. Be sure you let your staff know exactly what you need from them.
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2. Learn How to Be a Good Manager By Implementing Project Management Tools
When looking to boost performance among your staff and become a better leader, one sure-fire way to achieve your goals is to implement the right task management and project management tools. This can help you better track what your employees are accomplishing on a daily basis.
For example, Runrun.it software offers a number of task and project management features that will allow you to track the workflow at your company. You’ll be able to track time invested in project and clients, work with team members on a virtual basis in order to meet deadlines and track timelines for projects as well as distribute tasks among your staff. This will help you become a more organized manager who can motivate your team by keeping track of all work tasks.
3. Motivating Your Team will Set You Apart in the Management World
When it comes to human behavior, it is quite simple to get the most out of your workforce. Your employees will accomplish tasks because they want to. Sometimes people only want to finish a task because the consequences of not doing so, such as getting fired or demoted, are unpleasant. Yet, one of the best ways to get the highest quality work out of your team members is to make sure they accomplish tasks because of what they can get out of it.
This means you may want to motivate your staff by recognizing certain employees who go above and beyond. You may want to provide awards or prizes. A simple raise can also go a long way toward obtaining the best work out of your employees.
Your workers will accomplish their tasks and provide great results when they get paid more or receive some type of prestige or recognition in the company. Worse outcomes come when people are not being motivated, want to be more lazy, and still get paid for their work.
On the other hand, your team members will work harder if they want to impress someone. This means you will need to show that you are paying attention and will reward them for their efforts. These type of rewards are excellent motivators in the workforce. So be sure to figure out exactly what will motivate your team and implement those type of rewards.
4. Providing Structured Feedback is Helpful for Your Workforce
Along with using the right project management tools, having effective communication strategies, and motivating employees with recognition or rewards, providing structured feedback will be very helpful for your team and will help you become a better manager.
For example, annual (or quarter) performance reviews should be planned by paying attention to individual employees throughout the year, which will help you deliver more structured feedback, according to The Muse. One of the first steps you’ll want to take is to learn the best time of the year to give out performance reviews at your company.
For example, if annual reviews are given in December, you’ll want to set up January as the time you let everyone know your expectations and goals for the following year. Afterward, be sure to meet with each employee you manage every few months to touch base and learn if they have any concerns or questions going forward. Toward the end of the year, meet with your team members in order to review their annual results.
Be sure to compile notes for every employee several weeks before the review including sales reports, client feedback, and project deadlines. When you review these documents, ask yourself whether the worker is meeting their goals and whether they have the results you’re looking for. If not, find out how you can help them improve. If they are performing well, think about assigning them into more complex projects and rewarding them with bonuses.
Figure out how to set up the meeting and whether you will detail every goal of the employee or every project they worked on throughout the year. Don’t forget to conclude by discussing future goals and ways they can improve at their job.
5. Keep Track of the Finances at Your Company
When looking for how to be a good manager, you’ll want to keep track of the money at your place of business. As a manager, you’ll be expected to boost revenue for your company. This means reducing spending for the company and improving the profit margin. You will need to have a strong understanding of how to keep spending low and how to increase revenue. Be sure to learn about basic money management in order to become a successful manager.
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6. Focus on Implementing Ethics in Your Management Style
It is vital to practice ethical management at your company. There are various scandals such as those within the banking industry that have led to major problems for corporations in the past. You will want to avoid such scandals at all costs, which means practicing ethical management is imperative.
Essentially, this means being completely honest along with following the rules of your industry and the laws of the land. You’ll need to be honest with your workers, customers or clients, team members, and any bosses.
7. Avoid Micromanaging Your Team
According to entrepreneur Michael Kurland’s article in Forbes, some of the best managers are those who let their employees have the freedom to complete their work without looking over their shoulder every step of the way, which is known as micromanagement. Trust your workers to complete their projects if you want satisfied, outgoing team members. Otherwise, your staff will feel too controlled and you will be unable to properly motivate your team to achieve at optimal levels.
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If you are a new manager, you may have difficulty with leaving some of your day-to-day responsibilities, but you will need to trust those employees below you to take on these tasks so that you can take on your new supervisory role. Your team members will take on and excel in new endeavors if you show that you trust them to complete certain projects and tasks.
Make sure that you do have open and honest communication with your workers so that they will ask questions and seek assistance from you if anything does come up. Be sure to work with your staff to ensure all questions and concerns are addressed.
By avoiding micromanagement and letting your team take on more responsibilities, you’ll be able to foster more confidence and strengthen skills among your team members. Additionally, by avoiding micromanagement, you can focus on bigger goals and initiatives to help grow your business.
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8. The Appropriate Software Helps You Learn How to be a Good Manager
As you apply new ideas and learn how to be a good manager, you will need to include the appropriate tools and software in your workplace in order to properly supervise your staff. You will need to incorporate tools that help you control tasks and projects such as the dashboards available with Runrun.it software.
This software includes time tracking tools that help you ensure your team members meet their deadlines and complete tasks in a timely manner. The time sheets produced through this software provides a more efficient and straightforward process with fewer inaccuracies. This will help you better manage the production time among your entire team and you’ll be able to reference the data all on one dashboard.
Additionally, you will be able to easily assign new tasks to your employees using the software’s dashboards. In order to be a successful manager, you will need to use the right tools to help you reach your goals and grow your business. Keeping track of your team’s results using the right tools can help you later provide more structured feedback during annual reviews. Do you want to use the right tools in order to improve your management style? Then try the Runrun.it free trial by clicking here.
