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"I didn't go into business to manage people"

5 key skills for great people management

 

November 7, 2019

For many of us starting out in our career, or starting our own businesses, we didn’t consider that at some point our role may grow or we would get promoted and that we may have to employ and manage a team of staff.  Whether we started our own businesses as a one-person band, took on the responsibility of running the family business or find ourselves being promoted into a position of people management responsibility because we are technically capable, developing great management skills is the key to success and growth.

Being a great People Manager requires you to take on a variety of roles and personas in order to keep your team focused and motivated. Being a great manager takes more than simple leadership skills, you also have to develop how you communicate with senior management and your team, whilst effectively delegating and motivating. All of this can be learned on our popular management development programme and to give you an idea of what our delegates learn, we thought we’d share our top 5 skills for great management.

Communication is key

Effective communication with your team is key to your success and growth. In today’s society we have so many ways to communicate from social media and WhatsApp, all the way through to (takes deep breath) face to face, yet we don’t seem to find the time to communicate effectively.

A good manager needs to not only understand how to communicate but also, the right method of conversing with different types of people. For example, relying on an ad hoc freelancer to read a message on a team communication board like Slack will be less effective than if you were chatting to a permanent team member. Similarly, using WhatsApp assumes that your team all have it loaded on their phones.

The two key elements to communication are WHAT you are saying and HOW you say it. It’s worth remembering that only 7% of how your message is projected is through the words that you use. 55% is through body language and 38% is through tone. “Wow, fantastic job John” could come across as either congratulatory or, to some, as sarcastic. Get some feedback from members of your team about how you come across to them and use what they’ve said as a part of your continuing professional development.

Learn how to lead a team

Understanding team dynamics and how that leads to excellent performance is the next step in becoming a good manager. Where many managers, quite understandably, understand how important it is to hire a bunch of great people who have the skills that they need, it’s also equally as important to ensure that they work well together as a team.

How do you do this? Firstly, clarify all the job roles within the team and ensure that everyone understands their role and the roles of others around them. Within that also learn what motivates each individual and also what will motivate the whole team.

You also have to learn to deal with conflict because, trust us, it will occur at some point. It’s a natural reaction to want to shy away from conflict and we deal with a number of managers who take the approach that if they ignore it, it will resolve itself. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, instead excellent communication and facilitation skills will be more likely to create resolution.

Effectively manage performance

A manager is only as good as the performance of their team. We believe that there are 3 key areas that are necessary for good performance management.

  • Create clear objectives – From the outset ensure that your staff know exactly what you expect from them and what they need to do to be successful.
  • Provide regular feedback and coaching – If your team don’t know how they are performing, how do they know what they are doing well and what they can improve on. When things go wrong help your staff to reflect on what they could do differently in the future. (Is anyone noticing a communication theme here?)
  • Recognise success – We all need to feel valued and recognised and regular appraisals enables us to plot our achievements against performance objectives.

Know your employment law!

Employment law can be a minefield and there are multiple pieces of legislation that can affect employment in the UK. With that comes the opportunity to get things wrong. We understand that when you are running a small business, there are usually so many things on your plate, you probably feel like you have the biggest dinner plate in the world, but that is when it is easy to get yourself into trouble when it comes to employment law. One simple statement, letter, comment, gesture, can get you into a whole world of trouble.

While there are HR experts like Dakota Blue that you can rely on, it’s also vital for managers to understand the basics and key principles of employment legislation. We don’t suggest knowing every single piece of legislation, but at least know as much as your employees can Google.

Be Organised

As a manager, you are the person that your team looks up to. You can’t expect your staff to work like a well-oiled machine if you are unable to manage your time effectively. An overwhelmed and stressed out team leader will pass that friction down the line they manage. So, look at yourself and how you manage your time, take care of yourself both physically and mentally, and consider gaining some perspective over your work and life habits.

If any of these are ringing any bells or you think that maybe you could do with some help in achieving any of our 5 key skills, it might be time to book yourself on our Management Development Programme.