Often people get pushed into management roles not because they’re great at handling other people; they become managers because they excelled at their job. If you’re an owner reading this, you became a manager out of necessity—you needed employees to grow.
However, as is often the case, just because you become a manager doesn’t mean you know exactly how to manage. It can be difficult dealing with different personalities and the challenges associated with them. Being a good manager is something that takes effort and focus.
To help you in your quest to be a better manager, here are 6 common qualities all great managers should have. They’ll help you gauge and mold your future performance:
Train Yourself
How do you get to being a manager people often respect? You must have good leadership skills. Thankfully, all over the country there’s an assortment of leadership-training courses available. Even easier to attain, there are thousands of books on the subject of leadership. If you expect your people to train on a weekly basis, you should absolutely do the same: Invest in going to classes and constantly be reading books and other materials on the subject of leadership.
Enlist in the Help of Your Team
Great managers are very collaborative. They are not pushy with their employees. They regularly share objectives with their employees and then ask their employees how they can use their strengths to achieve success.
Offer Feedback
Give feedback regularly and openly. It drives many employees crazy when they cannot get any feedback from their employer. When offering feedback, be sure that it’s not always negative. Talk with your direct reports several times a week—and not just in a work capacity. See how they’re doing. Tell them you appreciate their hard work. And always ask for feedback.
Set Goals
Teamwork shouldn’t be ad hoc. Although you may not know what you’re doing tomorrow, you should have general objectives for what you are trying to achieve in the most general terms. Set SMART Goals = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.
Empower Your Employees
Give your employees the tools and means to be successful at their jobs. When you train people and share with them your expectations, you then should allow them to do their job. You’ll find that it will improve morale in the company, and not only will your company grow, so will your employees.
Give Up Control
No manager can do it all alone. Don’t be the manager who thinks you can handle everything. You can and should give up control so that you can truly make yourself a success.
This means you’re going to have to get used to trusting people. And once you do, you’ll feel so much better that some of those other tasks are no longer on your plate.
But if you do everything, you’re only going to be one step closer to being a burned-out manager who is limited by his/her mental and physical capacity.
These are 6 core qualities that you should strive to achieve as a manager. Get the training, allow your team to rule, support them, give feedback, set objectives, and just be yourself. The more you do it, the more success you’ll enjoy.