Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing
Top 10 Leadership Tips for Managers
“When crew and captain understand each other to the core, It takes a gale and more than a gale to put their ship ashore.” (Rudyard Kipling)Your main job as a top manager is to see that your department performs productively and as efficiently as possible. Who is your company (or department)? It is always people! They need to be led and never driven! Management can help them to have a more enriched experience in the workplace with just a little extra effort. When you do, the employees will be more dedicated, satisfied and productive. If you don’t, your company will have a higher turnover rate, expense in training new hires and less productivity. It is less expensive to equip your lower management and supervisors with some tools to help them be concerned about how to lead and not drive the workers. If your workers are not satisfied, they will never satisfy your customers!
1. Create team spirit.
View your employees as being professionals on a team mission. Never refer to employees as “my employees” or “my staff.” They want to feel important and significant, not just a hired hand. The most successful managers refer to employees as “our team.” This helps increase the team spirit. This lets the employees feel better about their work. A team works together and not as independent workers doing a certain mundane job, but having a sense of pride in the joint effort of the final product or service.
2. Team members are professionals.
Think and refer to your employees as professionals. Even the janitor or custodial staff who keep our factories and work places clean and safe to work in are professionals. If you have surgery in a hospital operating room, you had better hope and pray the janitor was a professional! Remind your team members to maintain a professional appearance with their actions, talk and dress. Remember the cliche: If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck, it is a duck! By asking your employees to act and look professional they will be more professional. They will also have a higher level of dedication about their work. Your customers will also notice a professional image about your business.
Look for opportunities to boost their self image. If you respect them as professionals, they will respect you in your role as a manager. All classes of workers from truck drivers to health care providers to office staff are professionals.
3. Give 5 compliments a day.
Each day give five sincere compliments to various workers in your section. Be on the look out for something they did well and give them a bit of praise. This will boost morale faster than anything you can do! All individuals need to feel sincerely appreciated! This also works miracles at the home front! When you are critical of a worker, it can devastate their ability to be creative and productive. When there is a need to correct, try to correct the action and not the person. This lets them know you want them to improve and be successful.
4. Be observant and listen.
Be observant and listen between the lines of the words the employees are saying. Don’t be too quick to respond to a question without trying to really hear what the question is about. Even if you know the answer, listen respectfully and hear out their question. This will help you open up communications between you and the workers. Lack of communication can be a big problem in the workplace.
5. Give some, to get the mission(s) accomplished.
The way a task is handled may not be exactly the way you wanted it handled. However, if it gets done in an acceptable way, don’t be quick to say “I think you should have done it my way.” This of course depends on the situation. Sometimes newer managers get caught up with wanting to show the worker who is the boss. (They really do know.) Besides, as managers get more comfortable with their role, they will be the first to notice the staff under them really does know how to get the job done better. Your role needs to be supportive and provide assistance and direction. You’re not giving up control, but allowing them to use their creativity to do their work.
6. Make their job better.
Meet with your individual workers randomly and informally (perhaps over a cup of coffee), and ask what can the company do to make their job easier and more efficient. This lets the employees know you sincerely value and appreciate their input and effort.
7. Reward a great job.
If one of the team in your section has been doing extra duty, give them a few days off. Tell them to take their spouse to the next out-of-town meeting and then have a day on the town. You’re not only helping your team member feel better about their job, you’re also helping the spouse to feel more supportive of their mate’s work. Do something a little unexpected to let them know you appreciate the extra effort. Upper management being focused on results and putting out fires, they sometimes forget about the horse that provides the results, who is getting tired and burned out. Always be concerned about what is going on and how the troops on the front lines are holding up. Management needs to roll up the sleeves and get to the front line to see the action (or output) that causes the results.
8. Support their needs.
If a person on your team asks for a piece of equipment, a resource, or additional training don’t always make them defend your 64 questions as to why they need it. It will kill morale. If you can’t get what they need at the time, say so because of funds or whatever the reason. If it seems remotely helpful to them, get it. It will let them know you trust them and want to be supportive.
9. Trust to be trusted.
Trust your team members and they will trust you. Be suspect of them, and they will live up to your expectations. The main point is to respect them as professionals and give them the tools and time to do the job. They, just as all humans are going to make a mistake or two in the course of the job. Be careful that you allow the room to make and correct mistakes without killing their self esteems. Sure we want them to be professional and not mess up. But they, just as you, will make a mistake. If you always hammer them for every mistake, you will starts seeing them pass the blame. That is one mistake a leaders should never do. Pass the blame. Sometimes leaders want the authority without the responsibility!
10. Persuade them to action.
Set clear goals and show them the benefits the company and they (they are the company) will get for their action. Then support them to get those widgets built, sold and delivered.
Cliff R. Todd, Author of Total Commitment in Your Workplace, Trainer, Consultant who loves to help business and others reach their higher limit, who can be reached at crtodd@sat.net.
Posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Employee Relations, Leadership, Marketing, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
