BrightSkills

Being a manager can be tough at times.  In the current climate, managers are often stretched to perform at their best - minimising costs, reducing headcount, maximising revenue... while increasing productivity and building team morale!

At BrightSkills, we work with managers from all industries and of all sizes - from small business right through to global enterprises and corporations.  We're continuously curious and passionate about management skills and styles - 'What are they doing to achieve those results?'

In this blog, we've outlined our Top 5 Tips for Better Management - based on our experiences and observations working with management teams over the last 10 years;

1. Lead -v- Manage

It's important to understand the difference between leading and managing.  There are hundreds if not thousands of definitions of the two.  In our book;

• "leadership is the skill of moving forward towards a vision, communicating that vision to others and inspiring others to move forwards alongside you" - Eve Bulman
• "management is the combined skill of understanding the strategy and organisational goals while implementing the operational measures necessary to achieve these goals" - Eve Bulman

In the current climate, there is a need for strong management skills on the ground to keep operations moving as efficiently as possible.

2. Listen & Ask

Some managers become masters at assigning work and/or delegating tasks.  Great managers devote time on a daily basis to Listening to their team members.  They Ask questions to gain more insight into operations on the ground and they devote time and energy to understanding the challenges, frustrations and general feelings of their team.  Managers who Listen and Ask don't get surprises and are always best positioned to communicate messages to the team because they understand the team's personality and mood at any given time.

3. Adapt Your Style

Every manager has a preferred management style - whether that is Directing, Collaborative, Democratic or Coaching , great people management depends on the individual's ability to adapt their style to the needs of the employee - not their preferred style.  Remember, people, don't want to be treated equally, they want to be treated individually!

Adapting your style to the preferences and needs of others will enable you as a manager, to get the most out of every team member.  We work on this skill and knowledge in depth on our Insights for Leaders programme.  Contact us for more details.

4. All Feedback is Good Feedback

Running a tight ship means keeping people operating at their optimum levels.  Great managers know that acknowledging both good and poor performance is key in achieving this.

Strong people managers don't shy away from dealing with difficult situations and delivering hard feedback to team members.  They do so in a caring but professional way.  Great people managers also recognise the importance of positive feedback and always recognise a job well done.

At BrightSkills we use the AID model for delivering feedback to individuals and teams - this is a tried and tested model for successful feedback delivery.

5. Smart Capacity Planning

Our job as managers is to empower our teams to do the best job possible.  To do this, we must ensure that our teams are operating in an environment where they CAN perform well.  Smart capacity planning and team time management is essential here.

We recommend that managers develop weekly and monthly capacity plans for their teams.  This will allow them to assign and monitor workload realistically and will also create an objective foundation on which they can negotiate with stakeholders and senior management.  We cover smar capacity planning in detail on our 'Team Time' and 'New Manager' training programmes.

If you found this blog useful, please leave a comment / thought below!