It takes a particular type of person to manage a group of any size. This is particularly true in business. Nowhere else is there more pressure to succeed and if something goes wrong, there’s a pretty good chance that the responsibility will fall on the manager. The classic assumption is that if someone is good at their job, they’ll inevitably be good at managing other people when doing it. Of course, this is totally false and has resulted in a whole host of problems for various businesses. Anyone who’s ever tried to jump into a management role knows that it isn’t for everyone. That being said, even if you are the kind of person who is able to settle comfortably into a management role, that doesn’t mean that you will never need to develop or improve. Even if you were born to manage a team, there’s a very solid chance that you’ll need to do a lot to keep your skills sharp and up to date. Nothing leads to poor management than assuming that you never need to improve. With that in mind, here are some ways that you can make sure that you’re the best manager that you can be.
Be willing to change
You might think that, because you’re the manager, that you have the best idea of how to tackle a particular problem. But there’s no value in refusing to ever change your mind about anything. Of course, you should have faith in your decisions; you are the manager after all. But the best managers have to be willing to be flexible and adjust their decisions according to new information. If you and your team are working on a project and you seem to be coming up against a wall, think about your working methods. Are you doing what’s best for the team and for the project? Or are you just doing things the way they’ve always been done? Remember, nothing halts the progress of a project more than insisting on doing something for no reason other than that’s how you’ve always done it.
Stay up to date
The worst managers are the ones who assume they know everything. In contrast, the very best managers are the ones who know that there is always new information out there and are eager to learn and share it with their team. Reading various blogs and publications is a great way to stay up to date on all the most recent business and management practices. You might not use them all, but you may come across something that helps you learn how to engage better with your team. Of course, as good as blogs and publications are, nothing beats actually getting some formal training from people with genuine know-how. Simplilearn run some fantastic prince 2 courses that will be absolutely perfect for anyone wanting to grow and improve as a manager.
Value your time
It’s very easy, as a manager, to be pulled in a dozen directions at once. When you’re in charge of a team, it’s tempting to try and constantly take care of each task and team member. But this is obviously impossible and at best you end up with a half-done job. At worst you end up with chaos and you end up burning out from exhaustion. Treat your time as a precious resource, because it is. Think about where your time and effort would be best utilized. Are there team members who are doing a fairly simple task that required less direct management? Then focus more heavily on the staff and tasks that will need more specific attention.
Make the tough calls
If something is going wrong, you can’t be afraid to say so. This isn’t always going to be easy. Sometimes your team will have put hours of work into something, and you will have to scrap it all and start over again. Your team might not thank you for this in the short term, but the consequences of ignoring it would be far worse. Starting over is better than moving forward in a way that will result in a poor finished product. As the manager, it’s up to you to make that decision. You can’t rely on your team to do that. Often they will be so engrossed in what they’re doing that they aren’t able to see the big picture. The big picture is your job, and your team has to trust that you have the best interests of the project at heart when you tell them to throw it in the trash and start again. When the project is over, and the result is successful, they’ll see that you were right.
Listen to your team
The worst thing that a lot of managers sometimes do is to forget that they are managing real people. They get so wrapped up in all of the things that they’re doing to achieve the goal of the project that they forget actually to listen to the people they are working with. While you should definitely be the one to take the lead on any given decision, you should remember that your choices don’t affect you alone. Always discuss decisions with your team and find out how they feel about them. You might find that they are able to point out something that you previously hadn’t been able to see. Similarly, if you spend all of your time doing things without consulting your team, that’s just going to foster a pretty large amount of resentment. It’s so important that you make sure that your team feels valued. This also takes some of the pressure off you. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re the only one to take on all of the responsibility for something. By discussing issues with your team, you create a healthier, more collaborative environment.
