Among one of the many diaries of Leonardo da Vinci, it was discovered the following note: “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” Bringing it to out context, it is hard not to agree that understanding is the first step to getting the admiration of the team. Both when you understand what your employees most need to work and when they know what you expect from their work. And if there is a way to the manager to provide mutual understanding in the workplace, it is to use a project manager. Employees now will have reasons to admire their manager for his/her leadership skills when they see the solutions he/she gave to their problems:
1. Less stress and anxiety
A project manager is a system where the company gathers all the content of clients, projects and tasks. This way, the demands do not fill the e-mail inbox of employees. Instead, each task has its data repository, where all the related info is, from the delivery date to the task description, besides attachments and comments/decisions. No more e-mails and folders everywhere or loosing briefings will make angry and anxious those who have to be the most motivated: your employees.
2. More organization and method
With a project manager you can list tasks and organize them by priority. No matter how many the responsibilities are, each one will have its time to be done. And with the need to create a task for each demand, big goals tend to be divided into subtasks. This method makes it much easier to both measure time and costs and the team productivity, once the project flows in faster steps.
3. More time and focus
Maybe the most direct way to gain admiration and respect of the team is treating their work with respect. Using a professional project manager, you can define who can open demands to whom – preventing people from other areas to spoil the productivity of your team. In addition to more focus and time to devote to what actually is the responsibility of each employee, to prioritize demands is a way to understand how each one works best and show what is more important and needs to be done before.
4. More productivity and recognition
The tip I give you is, if you adopt a project manager to be your right arm, make it clear to your team that you thought of all the benefits before implementing it. From now on, you will have a tool to measure the production and recognize good behavior and commitment. It will be a new stage in the history of the company, in which bottlenecks, too much emails and meetings, and disorder in the workflow will be legends. And well, how not to admire that?
(Bonus) 5 factors that can make your company admirable
For Bill Taylor, Harvard Business Review columnist, you need to have an yes to each one of the five questions below, as a prove of your company is admirable indeed:
A) Which ideas my business represents?
Perhaps the most admirable companies not only sell competitive products and services, but also defend important ideas, aimed at shaping the competitive scenario to recast the notion of what is possible for customers, employees and investors.
B) Does my team work as distinctively as it sells?
You cannot actually create a product or service attractive or unique in the market, unless you create something attractive or unique in the workplace.
C) Do we create an “emotional contract” with our customers?
Sales success today is much more about than price, performance and features. Customers seek passion, emotion, identity: they seek to share their values. An admirable brand is not only efficient and productive, it is memorable after purchase.
D) Is my company a leader in creating leaders?
Do we just lead in innovation, in financial performance, in market share? These are amazing podiums to mind, but you should also care about understanding that the only sustainable way for long-term business is the leadership that creates leaders – attention: in all company levels.
E) And after all, are we as consistent as we are creative?
Many companies seem too confident in the ideas they believe, in the culture they created, in the way they connect to their customers, and are willing to keep their strategies, even if the watchword around is crisis. Jim Collins, great management guru, concluded about it: “The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” In other words, not to interpret the spirit of the time and stop in time.
Are you not the admired leader you expect to be? The attributes that define the companies you admire and study are not the attributes of your company? There is still time to meet Runrun.it., the project manager software with all the attributes you have read here. Try it for free: http://runrun.it
Recommended for you:
- The 3 advantages of using a project manager
- Team management: skills you must have
- Productivity: 5 companies that will surprise in 2015
