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Top 9 Amazing Managerial Skills Every Manager Should Master
Do three out of four of your employees feel that you, as their manager, are the most stressful part of their job? Does that kind of discouragement cost your firm 50 percent of its potential productivity?
An exceptional manager is worth their weight in gold as they drive the organization’s growth forward. Thus, it’s critical to foster the right managerial competencies for your firm to thrive.
Here’s a closer look at nine of these mission-critical competencies you must nurture.
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1. Strong Communication Skills
Being a strong communicator is one of those managerial traits that, on the surface of it, seem trite. However, no matter how gifted a manager is, without communicating well, they won’t translate their skills into results.
A great manager needs the capacity to offer both negative and positive feedback to the team. Knowing how to couch negative feedback such that it doesn’t drag down the team’s confidence or morale is highly critical.
If you can offer feedback clearly and concisely, your team will know how to proceed. But unclear and obfuscated feedback only confuses the group, slowing down their progress and overall productivity.
2. Conflict Resolution
Where two or more people co-exist, there will arise conflict from time to time. As a manager, issues such as interpersonal office matters, recognition, and even compensation are bound to foster conflict.
Therefore, you need to learn how not to avoid conflict but instead resolve it quickly and successfully.
You need to show your team that you listen to their grievances. Such a posture will communicate to your staff that their opinion matters, and it will help them be more comfortable opening up on issues affecting their performance.
3. Decisive
As a manager, you provide leadership within your department, and that has a critical impact on the overall performance. Only a decisive manager can bring together team members to deliver on the business strategy.
You need to be confident about the decisions you make as that grows the team’s faith in your leadership.
Additionally, you have to recognize and take up the consequences of your decisions as employees loath a manager who makes the bed but won’t lie on it.
When a decision you made turns out not to be the best one, you should leverage that as a learning curve. That helps your team respect you even more as they see you as a manager who abides by your word.
4. Performance Management
An excellent manager must deliver on their KPIs, and to do so, you need effective performance management skills.
Creating performance goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART) is the foundation. From there, you need to set clear expectations for the assignments you hand out.
For these clear goals to materialize in productivity, you must develop a system for holding employees accountable. That should include rewarding those who deliver to expectation.
If you notice underperforming team members, it’s worth taking the time to zero in on the causes. Coach such team members to help them develop more capacity.
5. Delegate Well
Your department is only as effective as its most significant bottleneck – you. If everything needs to be approved by you, then you’ll hold the whole team up.
A good manager is one who knows how to delegate work so the department can function optimally. You should know the weaknesses and strong points of your people to pair the right skill set with the best fitting tasks.
Delegating well also impacts your team’s morale. As you show each member that you trust them to deliver, you build up their confidence. Taken as a whole, effective delegation can lift departmental productivity by boosting employee confidence.
6. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of, manage, and express one’s emotions. For a manager whose job description entails dealing with people every hour of every day, you need consistent emotional intelligence.
A manager that’s only intellectually intelligent may be sharp, but that won’t move the team to work at their best. People are not influenced as much with what you know as by how you make them feel.
Therefore, develop the capacity to understand how different character temperaments work to know how to bring the best out of your team.
7. Self-Reflection
As you supervise and lead your team members, you do it in a public arena. Any failures you make are not only noticeable to you but everyone around you.
It’s with that in mind that every manager should pick up the art of self-reflection.
When you pay attention to how you react to issues and why you react as you do, you become a better manager.
For example, if you find yourself blowing your top whenever an employee fails to execute as expected, you need to evaluate that. What about that situation drives you to lose your composure and berate a team member you are supposed to be empowering?
When you develop the habit of identifying and remedying personal shortfalls, you inevitably gain your team’s respect. In turn, they seek to perform better since you are walking your talk, leading to higher productivity.
8. Standing up for Team Members
When it comes to leadership, being a manager is about absorbing the blame and giving the team all the glory.
If you have a higher up giving orders for your team that are not feasible, you need to speak up for them.
Since they have no agency according to the chain of command, you advocating for the team under the proper circumstances wins you their support.
Every employee will realize that they matter to you, and that, in turn, builds their loyalty and productivity.
9. Lead by Example
If there is only one management principle you should remember, it’s this – your people do what they see, not what you tell them.
Being able to lead by example is critical as a manager, as what you do is what your employees pick up on as permissible.
An effective manager needs to have the right character and habits that set a correct precedent for the team.
Nurture the Right Managerial Competencies
A reliable manager can make or break the firm. Thus, organizations can’t compromise on who you hire for management roles. Before taking a job offer, identify the right managerial competencies the firm needs to ensure you can contribute to their performance culture.
CLARIONTTECH is a management academy centre passionate about equipping students with relevant management skills for today’s market. Contact us today for accredited and award-winning training that gives you an edge as a manager.