Are you a good or bad manager?

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Our CEO explains what four factors separate the shoddy managers from the superstars

Your working relationship with employees is crucial, as this can often be the primary reason of whether staff love or loathe coming in to work of a morning. How well you perform your role as a manager can have a vital impact on mood, morale and even productivity. Having a happy workforce is vital for healthy teamwork and encouraging employees to use the initiative so you really need to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in to quality management.

There are four main themes that split the bad managers from the good. Have a look and make sure you employ them in your daily work routine to help generate an engaged and motivated staff.

1) Set clear expectations

Unless you communicate via telepathy, you will need to sit down with your employees and tell them directly what the business priorities are and what you expect them to do to contribute towards this. It is handy to use a performance review form, and actually define what ‘excellent performance’ is, so that colleagues have a very clear understanding of what skills they need to showcase and what tasks they need to execute in order to achieve this. With more experienced employees, you should discuss expectations at least once a year as well as formulate a plan for the approaching year. Make sure to discuss what results you expect when delegating tasks as well to further increase understanding.

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2) Coaching

Learn to deliver tactics and strategies from the sidelines. If you always do the set task for an employee, then they will never learn how to do it. It is important to encourage, and occasionally force, employees to take responsibilities for issues that arise, to further develop their problem solving skills and creative abilities. It can be difficult to get the right balance with coaching – being over-controlling can make staff feel inadequate or undermined, however under-controlling can simply cause more confusion as there is a lack of clear guidelines.

3) Feedback

Delivering negative feedback is a necessary evil for the employee to improve and learn and to ensure no mistakes are made in the future. Make sure to confront the staff member early enough about problems – waiting until a review meeting can sometimes be too long. It is important to give negative feedback in a constructive way. One good way to do this is to use the employee’s personal goal as a lead in, as this demonstrates that you have their best interests at heart and just want them to succeed. Feedback given along the way comes across like productive coaching and less like a punishment delivered in one hit during a review.

4) Recognition

All employees want recognition for their effort, and rightly so. Positive reinforcement is the best coaching tool at your disposal and is fantastic for maintaining motivation and boosting morale. Make sure to be specific and try not to mix negative and positive comments in one go. Ensuring to give the feedback and compliment as soon after the event as possible means that it has more impact, and the employee will remember the praise better, which makes them more likely to do it again!

How can you keep employees engaged?

  • Provide recognition
  • Give opportunities for career development
  • Use a suggestion box to get employee feedback, and then prioritise what feedback needs to be actioned for maximum impact

[testimonial name=”By Grant Finn” who=”CEO of Total Assist Group” imagelinks=”https://totalassist.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Grant125.jpg” vertical=”no”]”I have worked tirelessly at Total Assist Group for over 10 years now. I have overall responsibility for executing the continuous growth strategy of the company.”[/testimonial]