Entries Tagged 'Tips' ↓

First day back at work after the holiday season and I realize I’ve been slacking in terms of fresh content for DGM. This looming sense of slacker-dom has inspired me though. By neglecting my blog I was reminded about the golden rule of not neglecting your employees. It’s one of the worst things you can do. We all get pulled in a number of directions on a daily basis, but we have to remember that without our team, many of us couldn’t do the jobs we do.

Like most things, it’s all pretty logical:

Keep Them In The Loop - You don’t need to tell them every gruesome detail of every single situation, but one of the best things you can do is making it a habit to keep your team in the loop around timely events. Not only does it give people a sense of inclusion, but it’s an easy way to open the door to questions, clarification, and gives the eager ones in the group a chance to step up and be noticed if it’s a topic they’re passionate about.

Get Good At HR - There’s nothing worse than managers who are bad at following through on HR related issues. HR issues are the kind of thing that can cause mass amounts of stress, turmoil and paranoia for many employees. You don’t need to be an HR guru to be good at this stuff. As simple as it sounds, just going over and making friends with your HR counterparts makes this all a lot easier.

Communicate - Whatever you do, do your best to not be a black hole when it comes to communicating with your team members. You should make it a habit to try and manage by “walking the shop floor” and interacting with as many people as you can on any given day. Consider this your daily recon mission to gather new information and add some context to the daily activities. You’d be surprised how much useful information you can garner just by being friendly and taking a second to chat.

Follow Through - If you commit to trying to “make something happen” you better be ready to put your money where your mouth is. Nothing makes an employee feel more neglected than a manager who promises to do something and never finds the time to actually do it. On the flip side, if you do actually try and follow through, but hit a roadblock, make sure you refer back the first points above and keep your employees in the loop regarding the roadblock. An active and attentive management style tends to go a long way for many people.

At the end of the day your job as a Damn Good Manager is to facilitate awesomeness from your team and you’ll never do a truly good job of that if you have a habit of neglecting people.

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.