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Best practices guarantee success for new managers.
Not to over-simplify, there are often four reasons why new managers are unsuccessful – ineffective communication, failure to develop trusting relationships, weak results, and a failure to delegate.
As a new manager or small business owner you’ll quickly learn that labor costs will amount to 50 percent or more of your expenses.
If managed well, employees will help you to make money.
So it will be advantageous for you to learn all you can about managing people.
Here are the four basic concepts to implement:
Communicating
Clear communication will help guarantee teamwork and productivity.
You need to explain your vision for the team.
Employees appreciate knowing what you expect, how they’re doing and what’s in it for them.
Set goals about expectations of employee performance, coach your workers, and get feedback.
Share your logic in decision-making processes.
Explain concepts and principles to your workers, so they can feel involved and valued, and can be pro-active and take ownership of their work.
There are four ways new managers misfire in communication:
1. They don’t correctly address attitude problems among their employees.
2. They don’t adequately follow organization policies or direction from their supervisors.
3. Because of a lack of authority with peer managers, many fail to use persuasive tactics to resolve problems.
4. Open communication is not used to issue directives to their staff – employees perform better when directives are explained well.
Employees dislike unproductive meetings. Inspire them with productive meetings.
If managed well, employees will help you to make money.
Trusting relationships
It’s important to build trust throughout your organization. You’ll also have to employ workers who are trustworthy.
You’ll want to be able to sleep at night not worrying if projects are completed, customers are being served well, and that you’re embezzlement-free.
A productive step to take is to partner with your workers.
Another important tool: You can power your brand upward with employee empowerment.
Listen to your staff. Remember your workers are situated where the tire meets the road. You can get ideas on making profits from saving money on energy use to attracting new customers.
Trust can also be enhanced if you use the 18 leadership strategies for employee respect.
Getting results
Take an organized, timely approach in rewarding or punishing your employees. Reward results, not busywork. Rewards should be reserved for impactful results.
Performance reviews are an important part of management. You must also avoid errors in evaluations.
If your employees fail to perform, give them a chance to improve. (If they don’t, see the three key issues to consider when terminating workers.)
Delegating
One mistake to avoid is failure to delegate. Don’t be a milquetoast.
People-pleasers are ineffective managers. If you don’t delegate, you’ll suffer from burnout by failing to use effective time management.
Whenever you fail to delegate on mundane tasks, you’ll have a very expensive employee. Try to save your time and energy for critical thinking and strategic planning.
There’s another good reason to delegate: Retention of good workers. Talented employees usually appreciate responsibility in the workplace.
You’ll profit in the long term by not letting your stars become free agents.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are three resources:
25 Strategies to Succeed as a New Manager — Congratulations, new manager. Welcome to a job you’ll find most challenging – and satisfying – if you do it right. You’ll be carefully watched by your staff. You’ll be judged on values demonstrated by your actions. What values will you show your employees?
20 Warning Signs You’re Underperforming as a Manager — There are indeed 20 warning signs that managers are underperforming. Managers can often struggle whether they’re new or even if they’re experienced. Poor management, of course, leads to poor performance. As red flags, underperforming managers share one of two common traits with their ineffective employees. Such managers aren’t fully aware of their shortcomings. Even if they are aware of deficiencies, they’re afraid to admit it.
Human Resources – Slow Motion Gets You There Faster — Hoagy Carmichael’s phrase, “Slow motion gets you there faster,” is apropos in hiring the best workers for high performance. Here’s why and how to do it.
“One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people’s excuses for failure.”
-Robert Townsend
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