Can You Manage Being A Manager? (How do you Become an Effective Manager?)

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Product:	How do you Become an Effective Manager?
Date:	04/03/07 (1988 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: better pay, more power, more prospects

Disadvantages: the buck stops here, you've more responsibility when it comes to taking the fall

This one’s not as easy as follow steps 1, 2 and 3 and you’ll be an effective manager. Managers are not born overnight, that’s why you rarely meet a manager fresh out of school or college or even university. You have to gain a certain degree of life and work experience before you can become a successful manager.

Some people can come out of university and get into a management role but they will usually be called a management trainee and will be on a graduate training scheme. I’ve never heard of anyone coming out of university and being put into a manager’s job straight away with no work experience. More fool the companies that do that as book learning is not the same as having done the role practically.

The best way to get into a management role is to work hard and take note of what your manager does and remember what previous managers have done who you’ve reported to in the past. I don’t mean follow blindly what your manager has done as you might have had the misfortune to have worked for some really unprofessional managers in the past - don’t follow in their footsteps unless you want to be thought of the same way. Learn from others’ mistakes; if your manager expected you to stay late every day and you were never rewarded for this, be it by a bonus or payrise or even words of thanks and a promise of promotion when the time was right, don’t do the same thing to your staff. If your manager took ideas you gave him/her and presented them to senior management and took credit for them, don’t do the same thing, these things have a habit of coming back and biting you in the rear end!

A manager needs to manage his/her staff, this doesn’t mean order them around and expect them to do all of the work; your management responsibilities don’t mean you can delegate absolutely everything and no actual work yourself. You can delegate the mundane things and work on the more difficult tasks which need more strategic or complex thought to complete. A successful manager never asks their staff to do tasks they would never do or they themselves are not capable of doing. If you don’t know how to do it yourself, how would your subordinates be capable of doing it? How would you even be able to check if they’ve done it correctly?

Some people get to management level and have difficulty delegating tasks which can be easily carried out by their subordinates. You need to learn to let go and trust in your staff to complete the work you used to do, you’ve been promoted to a higher position because you’re capable of doing more, if you continue to hold on to the tasks which the rest of your team are quite capable of doing, you won’t be completing the more complex and urgent project which need your attention and your promotion might be short-lived as you’ll be seen as a team player and not a manager and best suited back in your old position!

An effective manager knows when to praise staff when they’ve done something well. People do not just thrive on being paid a decent salary and earning bonuses; we all like to be told we’ve done something well, to give a sense of pride in our accomplishments. Even you as a manager would like to hear from your superiors that you’ve managed a project well and/or they’ve had good feedback from your team about your leadership skills. Don’t deny it, we all need to be liked. Even if you’re a hard-nosed sales manager pushing your staff for the best results and highest sales figures, you still need to hear that your team appreciates you pushing them hard and will work all that much harder for you if you’re a fair boss.


SOME IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF BEING A MANAGER YOU SHOULD NEVER FORGET:

COACH YOUR STAFF: if they don’t know how to do it; show them, if they still don’t know; show them again. Better to show them a dozen times so they get it right, rather than show them once and they’re too scared to ask you again and they get it wrong and cost the company money and time. It will come back on YOU, as you were responsible for ensuring your team members know what they’re doing. It’s your reputation on the line here.

EVALUATE YOUR TEAM MEMBERS: make sure you regularly review your staff’s performance be these in the form of official reviews/appraisals or informal regular monthly meetings giving them feedback on their performance, advising what they’ve done well and what they could improve on. Remember you can’t just sack people without letting them know in advance that they’re not performing to the expected standards, leading onto:

DISCIPLINE STAFF WHEN NECESSARY: ensure your staff can feel comfortable coming to you with a problem, but don’t allow yourself to be perceived as a pushover, you don’t want people thinking “Oh don’t worry about finishing that project on time, Tom won’t mind, he’ll extend the deadline and/or finish it for you!” You need to have boundaries, if people are not able to meet a deadline, let them know that they need to inform you in advance not five minutes before something is due that it can’t be completed on time. That way more resources can be put on that particular project to ensure it is ready when it’s supposed to be ready. Don’t be afraid to instigate disciplinary meetings with staff if they constantly under-perform. The first meeting can be completely informal and start with “I note that you’ve had trouble meeting deadlines on your last three projects, is there any specific reason for this. I’d like to think you can tell me if there’s a problem I can help you with.” This way if there are real serious issues (such as domestic problems) you can be aware and maybe cut them some slack if you feel it’s necessary or if it’s sheer laziness or ineptitude, you need to think about taking them down the disciplinary process or giving them additional job training to help them. Remember when it comes to disciplining staff, if you have a formal meeting with them, let them do as much of the talking as possible, don’t put words in their mouth as to why things are not going so well. The more you let people talk the more likely they’ll be able to make their own suggestions as to how they’re going to put it right, and make sure these conversations are documented if they’ve gone past the informal discussion stage.

SET BOUNDARIES: when you become a manager of team in which you previously worked, you need to remember that you have a different relationship with your colleagues now. You’re not the same as them now, no matter how much you think you are. Your management skills are there to help them in their roles but also you’re there to make sure people aren’t being laid back in their jobs because you’re their “mate” and you can’t have the same “Let’s go down the pub after work and get drunk guys!” attitude you might have had before. You’re in a position of authority, you will now most likely know your colleagues’ salaries and they might expect your previous friendships with them to cloud your judgement when it comes to awarding bonuses or salary rises. Obviously to be a good manager, you should only reward people according to how they perform at work not how many pints they can drink before throwing up on a Friday night out with the team. Let them know you’re all still mates but you need to take a slight step backwards when it comes to socialising with the rest of the team.

GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: the worst type of manager is someone who hands in an idea to the board and pretends it was their idea when it was someone else’s. If one of your staff comes up with a good idea, make sure they are credited it with it. If the idea is that good, don’t be afraid that senior management will see it as your failure but they’ll see it as you nurturing good work from your team members and helping them to develop into better members of staff. You could always say it was “Bob Jones’ idea initially and we sat down and made a few changes to it to bring it to its current state which I’m presenting to you today.” Yes it was Bob’s idea but it was rather raw and you and Bob worked on it together to make it an ever better idea for cost-savings, new product idea, etc. You’ll be respected all the more for it.


Good luck as a manager, you’re really going to need it!

Summary: So much to do, so little time! Or is there?