Post by moon1257 on Nov 6, 2024 1:29:08 GMT -5
The main goal of any manager is to provide employees with the best working conditions. This implies a large layer of tasks: conveying the department's goals to each subordinate, setting tasks for personnel in such a way that the latter grow professionally, motivating them to high productivity and development with regular feedback, etc.
In the previous article , we discussed why there are few good middle managers in companies. The reason lies in the wrong attitudes - the manager's chair is occupied by an experienced specialist who spends most of the time working as an executor, not a manager. Today, we will talk about how a manager can develop important management skills.
Broadcasting a common goal, values, rules
The manager must convey to the team the shopify website design goals of the company and the department, internal rules and values. High involvement is possible only if the employee understands the importance of the work he does and sees its results, as organizational psychologists J. Hackman and G. Oldham proved in 1975 (1).
How can a manager understand whether he embodies the company's values and conveys the necessary behavior patterns to his subordinates? The best way to figure it out is to honestly answer the questions below:
Do I know the company's values and how they originated?
Does my behavior reflect the company's values?
When I talk about the company or its leaders, does it sound positive and motivating to the team?
Am I talking about the company's history or its successes during team meetings?
The manager should study the company's mission, its values, corporate culture and adopt the postulates stated there. If the HR brand is built on a high team spirit, mutual assistance, mentoring, the manager should use the "coach" style for feedback. For example, do not criticize the work of the subordinate, but ask leading questions so that the guilty employee himself understands his mistake.
It is important for a manager to follow not only corporate rules, but also team rules. For example, if employees prefer to discuss work issues via messenger, you should not send them emails.
The company itself, its values and successes should be on the agenda of team meetings at least once every two weeks. The topics of the meetings may be the rules of business correspondence and interaction with other departments adopted in the organization, information about significant events in the life of the company or its leaders, lectures on customer focus, time management, etc.
Planning and prioritization
The most destructive factor for team productivity is stress. The most powerful stressor for employees is a lack of resources, concluded organizational psychologist and author J. Pfeffer in his work Dying for a Salary (2). Specialists burn out most quickly if they perform tasks day after day in a mode of lack of time, hands or materials. Providing the team with resources is the primary task of the manager. To assess their planning and prioritization skills, the manager should ask the following questions:
Do I understand which tasks are a priority for the unit and which are not?
Am I clear about my team's priorities?
Do I explain to my employees why these particular tasks were prioritized?
Can employees openly tell me that a task I have assigned as a priority is not actually a priority?
Are my subordinates involved in work planning?
Prioritization should be done in team meetings: this way, employees will not only be able to track the logic of “exalting” the importance of some tasks over others, but also help the manager in the process of separating urgent tasks from important ones. In turn, individual employee goals should be prioritized during 1-on-1 meetings .
There are different methods for setting priorities. We suggest you familiarize yourself with the most popular ones:
Eisenhower Matrix. The method suggests dividing all tasks into four groups: important and urgent, important and non-urgent (core activity), unimportant and urgent, unimportant and non-urgent. You should concentrate on completing tasks from the first two groups.
Ivy Lee Method. In this method, priorities are set daily at the end of the working day - the manager selects six tasks to complete the next day. Tasks not included in the list are carried over to other days in a similar manner.
Two lists of Warren Buffett. The method involves defining 25 important tasks of the department. At the second stage, five of the most important goals are identified from the selected ones - they are transferred to a separate list. Thus, the manager will have two lists of tasks - those that must be performed first, and those that are done on a residual basis.
Feedback
Feedback from the manager plays one of the most important roles in motivating employees to effectively complete work tasks and develop professionally, according to the work of J. Hackman and G. Oldham "Redesigning Work" (3). The skill of organizing regular 1-on-1 meetings with employees ensures the professional development of the latter. To understand how well and timely feedback is given to subordinates, the manager should answer the following questions:
In the previous article , we discussed why there are few good middle managers in companies. The reason lies in the wrong attitudes - the manager's chair is occupied by an experienced specialist who spends most of the time working as an executor, not a manager. Today, we will talk about how a manager can develop important management skills.
Broadcasting a common goal, values, rules
The manager must convey to the team the shopify website design goals of the company and the department, internal rules and values. High involvement is possible only if the employee understands the importance of the work he does and sees its results, as organizational psychologists J. Hackman and G. Oldham proved in 1975 (1).
How can a manager understand whether he embodies the company's values and conveys the necessary behavior patterns to his subordinates? The best way to figure it out is to honestly answer the questions below:
Do I know the company's values and how they originated?
Does my behavior reflect the company's values?
When I talk about the company or its leaders, does it sound positive and motivating to the team?
Am I talking about the company's history or its successes during team meetings?
The manager should study the company's mission, its values, corporate culture and adopt the postulates stated there. If the HR brand is built on a high team spirit, mutual assistance, mentoring, the manager should use the "coach" style for feedback. For example, do not criticize the work of the subordinate, but ask leading questions so that the guilty employee himself understands his mistake.
It is important for a manager to follow not only corporate rules, but also team rules. For example, if employees prefer to discuss work issues via messenger, you should not send them emails.
The company itself, its values and successes should be on the agenda of team meetings at least once every two weeks. The topics of the meetings may be the rules of business correspondence and interaction with other departments adopted in the organization, information about significant events in the life of the company or its leaders, lectures on customer focus, time management, etc.
Planning and prioritization
The most destructive factor for team productivity is stress. The most powerful stressor for employees is a lack of resources, concluded organizational psychologist and author J. Pfeffer in his work Dying for a Salary (2). Specialists burn out most quickly if they perform tasks day after day in a mode of lack of time, hands or materials. Providing the team with resources is the primary task of the manager. To assess their planning and prioritization skills, the manager should ask the following questions:
Do I understand which tasks are a priority for the unit and which are not?
Am I clear about my team's priorities?
Do I explain to my employees why these particular tasks were prioritized?
Can employees openly tell me that a task I have assigned as a priority is not actually a priority?
Are my subordinates involved in work planning?
Prioritization should be done in team meetings: this way, employees will not only be able to track the logic of “exalting” the importance of some tasks over others, but also help the manager in the process of separating urgent tasks from important ones. In turn, individual employee goals should be prioritized during 1-on-1 meetings .
There are different methods for setting priorities. We suggest you familiarize yourself with the most popular ones:
Eisenhower Matrix. The method suggests dividing all tasks into four groups: important and urgent, important and non-urgent (core activity), unimportant and urgent, unimportant and non-urgent. You should concentrate on completing tasks from the first two groups.
Ivy Lee Method. In this method, priorities are set daily at the end of the working day - the manager selects six tasks to complete the next day. Tasks not included in the list are carried over to other days in a similar manner.
Two lists of Warren Buffett. The method involves defining 25 important tasks of the department. At the second stage, five of the most important goals are identified from the selected ones - they are transferred to a separate list. Thus, the manager will have two lists of tasks - those that must be performed first, and those that are done on a residual basis.
Feedback
Feedback from the manager plays one of the most important roles in motivating employees to effectively complete work tasks and develop professionally, according to the work of J. Hackman and G. Oldham "Redesigning Work" (3). The skill of organizing regular 1-on-1 meetings with employees ensures the professional development of the latter. To understand how well and timely feedback is given to subordinates, the manager should answer the following questions: