Management Skills – 4 Ways to Maintain Your Effectiveness

When managing others, it is sometimes easy to become bogged down in the everyday requirements of getting things done

. But as a manager, it is important to remember that you really are supposed to be getting things done through others. That means somehow finding time to ensure that you create an environment that allows you to complete tasks yourself as well as inspire your direct reports to do the same. Here are four things you can do to stay effective and keep your employees contributing.

Create An Overall Strategy To Achieve Goals: This means developing a comprehensive plan to coordinate the activities of people you supervise. Know everyone's assignments, know who is working on those assignments, and know the status of those assignments. Also, determine task priorities by deciding what is critical as well as what is not critical. Keep this information at the forefront of your staff. For example, at each staff meeting, highlight the Big Picture goals (overall strategy) as well the supporting priorities for everyone.

The more you highlight what is important, the more likely it is that your employees will be working on what is important.

Structure Specific Tasks, General Assignments, and Major Projects to Maximize Employee Performance: This involves assessing employee skills, interests, and goals. It also involves determining strengths and weaknesses. This information allows you to match workplace assignments with employee capabilities. Let employees know that you understand their capabilities and needs. Also, let them know that your approach to structuring assignments includes allowing them to maximize as well as enhance their performance.

The more you know about your employees and the more you let them know that you understand them, the greater your chance of encouraging better performance.

Provide Employees with the Necessary Tools, Information, and Resources Needed to Achieve Workplace Goals: This involves everything from making sure that the workplace environment is free of obstructions that might impact performance to providing writing paper. It also involves looking at ways to streamline and improve workload processes and practices.

The easier you make it for employees to do a good job, the easier it will be for you to manage what others do.

Create a Workplace Environment that Emphasizes Equity and Fairness: This means being conspicuous about treating everyone the same when it comes to activities that require equal actions from you. One broad example is to ensure that everyone has equal access to available information, resources, and tools. One narrow example is to make sure that you speak to everyone when you say "good morning" or "good night." Employees are vigilant about observing your actions. So remain conscious of how you interact with everyone and be consistent with your actions.

The more you are perceived to emphasize equality, the more employees will cooperate with you.

Management Actions Do Make a Difference

Even if all your employees perform outstandingly, you still need to do certain things to keep them motivated and contributing. How you handle assignments, materiel resources, and personal interactions all play a role in employee performance. So it is important to remain cognizant of your actions; and these four are particularly useful.

Management Skills 4 Ways to Maintain Your Effectiveness

By: Barbara Brown, PhD

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