Entries Tagged 'Team Building' ↓

If you’ve read management books or blogs you’ll know that a common theme is the need to be a good listener if you want to be a great manager. It’s absolutely true, but what many people don’t realize is that being a good listener is only part of the equation. Once you’ve listened to your employees (or even fellow co-workers) there are many times that you’ll need to give advice or impart words of wisdom. Enter “the office psychologist.”

If you plan on being a great manager you need to understand how to ease the psychological stress of your team. As the business environment fluctuates and evolves, it’s not uncommon for people to have challenges with managing through the change and associated stress. Sometimes it’s as simple as a basic pep talk, while other times you’ll need to patiently help people work through larger harder problems. If you are passionate about being a “people’s manager” you should strive to be a go-to in times of stress and offer your team an outlet for discussing challenges, stress, and problems.

Be A Repository For Fear and Anxiety – Give people an outlet to deposit their fear and stress. You’d be surprised how many times this will allow people to get the stress and fear out of their head and instantly start to deal with it. Now you need to be careful here. Just because people can use you as an outlet to deal with their stress doesn’t mean you need to take on that stress yourself.

Get People Talking – The more you do this the more you’ll come to realize that people can solve their own problems (most of the time). They know the right thing to do but they might not realize they have the answers in them. The more you can facilitate people talking thought their challenges the better.

Give Them Time To Think – It’s not always about “fast food” answers. Many times the best thing you can do is give people an outlet and then give them the time and the space to go away and let everything “sink in”. There are many times when all it takes is a simple comment or observation to jump start an employees coping mechanism to help them get through their mental barriers.

It’s not always easy (or convenient) but being able to manage your team through times of stress is critical to being a truly great manager.

Related Links:
http://www.badbossology.com/workplace-psychology
About.com – Stress Management

How many bosses have you had in your working career? How many of those bosses were great? How many were terrible? If you are like most people, the truly great bosses and leaders tend to be vastly overshadowed by the sea of lack luster ones. On the surface this is a pretty bleak outlook on ones working career; that is until you consider how all those bad bosses can help you to become one of the few great leaders in the work force. The rule is simple – when in doubt, do the opposite of what your worst boss would have done.

It sounds almost too simple, but it really works. As a manager you’ll be challenged on a regular basis. It really can be hard to make the right decision or figure out how to motivate your team. As long as you keep those bad boss memories close at hand you’ll have a reference point to guide you through murky waters. If your bad boss had trouble making definitive decisions, make sure you try your hardest to be as definitive as possible. If your worst boss was a terrible listener, make sure you are a very conscious listener. Literally, turn all those historical criticisms into your own personal management fuel.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times this trick has come in handy for me in the last decade or so. The one thing I can say though, is that I’ve never come up short by channeling my bad boss experiences and memories into my overall management style.

A couple of weeks ago I came across an article over on FoundRead that highlighted the 7 habits of a highly effective manager. The list came from a webinar given by entrepreneur and writer Alyssa Dver.

The 7 habits of a highly effective manager are:

1. Know your limits – you don’t need to be a know it all. There is alot to be said for a manager or leader who is comfortable with their own skillset and also knows when to augment it with the skills of his/her team. Talking and “acting” above and beyond your level of knowledge can really hurt your credibility.

2. Listen before you speak – as a manager it is your job to take in all of the available “data” and make meaning of it. Don’t give your audience a reason to think you are stupid, especially if you totally miss the point of discussion because you were to busy blurting out your views to really understand the topic at hand.

3. Ask “why” not “what” – this is especially important in situations with lots of “legacy”. Many time, people and organizations will go on blindly without understanding why they do things. By asking “why” you’ll have a chance to easily jump past legacy issues and get down to details and facts. “Why” is the first step in process engineering, and as a manager, you are a major process creator.

4. Be decisive – make decisions! A leader who cannot make a decisions will lose credibility almost instantly. If you are engaged in the previously outlined habits, you should be able to make the best decisions possible with whatever amount of “data” you have.

5. Be responsive – a managers job is to manage. This means doing your best to respond to questions, issues, etc. on a regular basis. You don’t need to solve every problem on your own, and you probably shouldn’t. Deligate issues and empower your team by being attentive to their needs. Many employees will take unresponsiveness very personally.

6. Communicate frequently – keep people in the loop so they feel included and aware of the world around them. By keeping a constant flow of information available to people they are less likely to harass you with seemingly simple obvious requests. People who feel “in the loop” also tend to feel more empowered.

7. Manage passion – be excited and energized about what you and your team are doing, but don’t lose track of reality. Managing passion is a culmination of all of the above habits. In many cases passionate teams sometimes mistake their passion for execution. Don’t get blinded by your passion and ignore the need to execute efficiently.

At the end of the day, a successful manager is: “A humble leader. A careful communicator. An avid student.”