How to improve management skills

in ghana •  7 years ago  (edited)

Managing people is tough, but fortunately, it’s a learned skill.

Use these four simple steps to improve your people management.

  1. Set appropriate goals. Ensure that the goals are meaningful to the employee. There should be rewards for goal achievement and consequences for failure. This will ensure that goal achievement rises to the top of the employees “To Do” list. Not all goals take months, weeks or even days to complete. We call very short-term goals work instructions. When giving instructions, do not assume that the employee knows what you want. Be explicit about what you need and when. Then, check for understanding. Don’t ask employees to repeat what you just said. Instead, ask open-ended questions. Ask how they plan to accomplish the task, whom they might involve, or what format they will use. The employee’s answers will confirm his understanding.

  2. Develop a plan to achieve the goals.

After setting goals, the employee will need to commit to a set of actions. A goal without an action plan is just a dream. Start by listing all the obstacles. Next, list the possible solutions for each obstacle. Actions will come out of the possible solutions. Finally, ask, “If I execute all of these actions successfully, will I achieve my goal?” If the employee can’t answer “Yes” with confidence, he will need to identify additional obstacles, possible solutions, and actions.

Assign a single person to each action step. We have found that when more than one person is responsible, no one is accountable. A group or team can work on an action step, but one person must be responsible. We call this point accountability. Create urgency by agreeing on a date and time by when the employee will complete each action step.

  1. Empower the employee.

Management must enable employees to achieve their goals. Doing this involves:

Training—It is unreasonable to expect employees to succeed if they aren’t properly trained or have not had sufficient time to practice. In an ideal world, you identify training needs as a part of the goal-setting process.

Motivating—Many managers rely on compensation, commission, profit sharing, bonuses, and employee stock ownership to motivate employees. While money is a serious motivator for many, studies show that only the prospect of receiving money in the fairly near future is a strong enough motivator to change behavior. Once the employee receives the money; its power to motivate ends very quickly. Some studies say within a week.

  1. Assess performance and make adjustments.

You have worked with your employee to set goals and develop an action plan. You have empowered your employees. Now, assess their performance and make any necessary changes. I'm not talking about performance evaluations that may only happen once a year. Effective management requires assessing performance much more frequently. For new employees or those learning a new task, you may need to assess performance daily or even hourly. Employees who have demonstrated competence may only require weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly performance discussions.

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I recently followed you and i think this is your first article. Its really great. I look forward to read more from your posts

Thanks bro

I like that you included "empower your employee". A trend I have noticed throughout my working life is that the most satisfied employees feel like they are part of the job and free to make decisions about the direction of work.

You are right. Follow that and you will be successful. Thanks for your compliment too

Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://www.td.org/Publications/Newsletters/Links/2012/03/Four-Steps-to-Improving-People-Management-Skills

Thank you very much. lets use this platform form to educate people on management. Looking forward to read more from u

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Well done bro, keep it up

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