By Alusine Fullah
“The organization must take responsibility for building a work environment which facilitates and supports fitness: from exercise to food to work environment to management,” Bersin.
Organizations have a responsibility to for creating and sustaining a work environment which facilitates and supports well-being. Creating and sustaining a culture of well-being does not come from the bottom up, but instead depends on leaders at all levels. Senior leaders, middle managers and direct line supervisors, all play a critical role in supporting employee well-being. While senior leadership support is critical, immediate managers and supervisors have more impact on employee well-being than does the institutional environment, the organizational leaders, or the work itself. Managers have the most day to day interaction with employees and therefore they are the primary gatekeepers of well-being.
As a manager, growing your management skills is an important part of demonstrating potential in the workplace and helping your team successfully accomplish goals. Making sure that everyone on a project works well together as a team and efficiently accomplishes tasks can be challenging, but there are several time-tested strategies you can use to improve your management techniques when working with others.
Yes indeed, to manage others, you first need to be committed to improving and developing your leadership skills and characteristics. Good managers can adapt their leadership styles to various personalities in the workplace, implementing feedback from their environment to achieve goals. Managing others effectively requires you to identify what motivates different people and find ways to emphasize those motivating factors in different situations. It also involves mediating between team members and using problem-solving techniques to facilitate a productive environment. How can you manage your staff/ workers, when you are not well managed? It sounds ironic really!!
So in line with the foregoing assertion, I suggest you manage your own workload first before you manage the success of others, you first should take care of yourself. Make your schedule a priority and guard your time, setting aside a block each day dedicated to completing your own work without interruptions. Eager managers can make the mistake of over-committing to their team and ultimately experiencing burnout, making them a less effective manager. Once you feel confident in your own work, you will be more attentive and focused on your team when they need you.
Get to know your team: to be an effective manager, you must understand the people you are managing. Depending on their personalities, people respond differently to various leadership styles. Some require hands-on management while others excel when they are given freedom and flexibility. Strong leaders can adjust their management techniques depending on who they are working with, cultivating every team number’s potential with personalized attention.
Getting to know your team involves learning what inspires them, the processes they use to complete their work, the environmental factors that hinder or support their work and the level of knowledge and skills they bring to the workplace. Knowing how someone works best and assessing their competency in different areas can help you assign tasks effectively and address issues productively without decreasing morale. You can start to learn about your team by using active listening skills in conversation.
Delegate tasks: learning how to trust others with key tasks allows you to focus on high-level management duties instead of micromanaging each responsibility on a project. Once you learn about each team member’s strengths, weaknesses, experiences and skills, you will be able to accurately delegate jobs to the people who are likely to do them well within the given time frame. Delegating tasks involves setting clear expectations with each person and ensuring that they feel confident in their ability to complete their portion of the project. By delegating responsibilities to others, you demonstrate trust in their abilities and help them feel invested in a project’s outcome.
As a manager, take control of your communication. Instead of waiting for your team members to reach out to you with questions, updates and concerns, take initiative when communicating with others. When you first step into your managerial role, whether it is official or unofficial, explain how team members should communicate with you and with one another. Identify the main channels for communication such as email or chat servers so that everyone understands what steps to take if they encounter an issue. Reach out to your team as a group and individually to check up on their progress and encourage open communication as a means to solve problems
The management should learn to identify clear workflows for their staff/ workers. Identify what role each team member plays in completing a project and map out the workflow processes you expect to use. Having a clear understanding of each individual role and how it impacts the overall project gives you a more informed perspective on what you can expect of each person. It also enables you to craft a reasonable timeline that employees can stick to. Managing employees without understanding the project workflow can result in confusion and delays, preventing you from efficiently identifying the cause of any issues that take place.
You need demonstrate consistent leadership. Building trust with your team is an important part of being a good manager. One of the best ways to show that you are trustworthy and earn respect from others is to be consistent in your behaviour. When you say that you are going to do something, follow through every time. Although you should personalize your management techniques to each individual, you also need to hold everyone to the same standards of behaviour to avoid showing favouritism. Consistent, reliable follow-through shows your team that they can trust you to be fair and equitable with everyone working on a project
Positive reinforcement is a highly effective management technique where you reward people who demonstrate excellence in the workplace. Be vocal when you notice someone producing quality work and encourage team members to celebrate one another’s success. You can recognize excellent work by something as simple as verbal praise or through a structured reward system, depending on what motivates your team the best. Find something positive about everyone on your team to emphasize so that you can recognize top performers and encourage others to be more confident as they grow their skills.
As a manager you should always give honest feedback. Good managers are able to be tactful and direct with their team when giving both praise and constructive criticism. To get the most out of others, you must be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, identify when their work is not up to standard and strategize on ways to improve. Your feedback should be honest without being discouraging so that failures can be used as growth opportunities instead of demoralizing moments.
