Manager, this word makes me remember of my earlier notion, an assumption I had of it during my college days, as ?the one who does nothing but mostly read/send emails and the one who is the BOSS in the team?. Well, as I said, it was my earlier assumption, which now has totally changed.
A Manager, now I believe, in a nutshell description, is the one who gets to take decisions, by virtue of his experience, in terms of years and in terms of the knowledge he/she has. It comprises of everything about his/her team ranging from a trivial decision (what it just seems) like approving a team member?s leave, sending a status report to client or the upper management, conveying upcoming holidays to client, managing resources, schedule/cost overruns, sharing project metrics, ensuring people and client satisfaction, timely deliverables and many others.
We have all seen managers, a lot of them. Manager, in a sports team, in a bank you have your account with, in the restaurant you go to, a petrol station you fuel your vehicle with?, they are everywhere. So, the fact is, a manager is an essential part of any eco-system, the one who drives the team, steers it in the right direction and makes sure that the team as a whole achieves its target.
We often see people complaining about their managers, about how task oriented he is, how a micromanager he is, how bad a task master he is, how insensitive he is?.well the list goes on. But, how often have we thought about how it would be for us when we are in his shoes? I guess, NOT very often. May be, we feel we don?t have to. On the flip side, how often the managers do really appreciate a team member for their efforts, care them as a mentor, guide and support them at hard times, have a personal rapport with them? How often?
We all do know that not everything works perfectly as planned and designed, if it was, things wouldn?t have to get this complex. There are times where things just halt, you were thinking that this was the perfect thing to do, but then you lately realize that it was a BIG wrong step. What do you do at those times?
If you happen to be a manager, I am sure you would have come across one or more such situations.
Well, here below, I try to talk about few of such things, things that will help you to (re)consider, look back and evaluate what you did or what you would have done on few of the many people management aspects.
And as I earlier mentioned, no one can fully describe this topic, this is not an exhaustive list but I believe, it will definitely serve as a reckoner.
? Appreciation
Make people, the team, realize their contributions and how it made or will make a difference.
Appreciation is one such thing that any individual will crave for, and as a manager you need to ensure that people are appreciated for their efforts and they get due recognition for their accomplishments. This is also a way through which you get to motivate an individual and also the team. So never lose this opportunity!
But, a word of caution before you get this firm on your mind – DO NOT OVERUSE and DEVALUE APPRECIATION, it is a very important thing and do not over use it and make people lose its significance. It?s like a wish you have been blessed as a manager, use it carefully.
? Communication – Keep it Clear and Open
Make the team realize the importance of having clear and open communication, and ensure, strive to have such environment.
I strongly believe that ?OVER Communication is better than NO communication?, a virtue I have always emphasized in all my teams. We often have seen teams falter due to lack of understanding, a direct result of lack of communication. So, is it so difficult to realize this?
? Challenges – Identify and work towards them
Know, try to know – the weaknesses and risks beforehand and create a game plan on how you could tackle them.
In this ever competitive world, it is very important that you know your weaknesses and work towards resolving them. No one individual in this world is perfect in all aspects. There is something or the other, which he/she will not be perfect at. But, a lot more important aspect to be emphasized here is, your initiative to identify these and creating a plan to bridge the gap.
Similarly, as a manager, it is very imperative for one to identify the challenges he/she thinks they have in the successful execution of a project. Few of the innumerable challenges one could face are ? people conflicts, new or unclear processes, too many or redundant processes, lack of proper communication channels, Improper planning leading to shortage of time, resources and budget, unclear goals, new technologies, at times ?bad history, insufficient support from the client or from management, cross geography multi-team model, time zone differences, lack of proper tools, improper leadership and many others.
? Feedback ? Provide and Seek, from and to, your clients and the team
I am sure we all believe that feedback is a very very important and necessary step. As I see it, we have nothing to lose in this process, what we may, is gain and it?s upon us, to WANT or NOT WANT it.
For feedback, I would talk to my manager, not just after my appraisal discussion, but at any intervals, whenever I feel have a concern towards something. I would say a formal discussion at times will all help us steer/realign oneself with what my manager expects and what I think that I should deliver. It is usually this communication or expectation gap which widens and creates such concerns. As I like to quote, ?the only thing that is CONSTANT is CHANGE?. So let?s remember an important point here, CONTINOUS FEEDBACK is a very necessary step to your successful career. So, as a manager, do not, never ever, hesitate to give feedback to your team and as a team member – always be ready to take or seek feedback. I do not say take all your manager says, make it a DISCUSSION and NOT a session. May be there are many things your manager doesn?t know about you, and you can utilize this discussion to explain why you HAD to do things that your manager felt as inappropriate or incorrect or also tell him your achievements.
As I see it, MOST managers do provide feedback, but, on a task by task basis. So what more is it exactly? The issue is, with such feedbacks you only tend to identify mistakes and as human nature goes no one likes people point fingers at them. So, establish a free flow of open and informal discussions and do not always wait for an individual to make a mistake. If you think that someone is doing a great job, appreciate him about his doings, Yes ? This is important!
But But But remember, feedback discussions can go haywire. You need to ensure that you know enough about the achievements and, if any, mistakes, of whom you are talking to. If you yourself aren?t fully aware of the individual?s potential and achievements, there is no point in giving feedback ?Then, it?s the worst thing you can ever do. So use this as a platform to motivate, correct, appreciate and understand your team members.
? Building Inclusion ? Making everyone realize the importance of their efforts
It is very important for a manager to make his team realize the criticality of each of their tasks and the underlying dependencies. Only when one realizes these, will they feel the importance of their efforts and how it makes a difference. The immediate effect ? The team takes full ownership of their tasks, they take the responsibility and you need less supervision. By doing so, team will also start realizing that they can take ownership of things and can achieve things without or with less supervision.
? Personal Rapport
It?s a team of individuals, who work towards a common goal. It?s a family and you are the HEAD!
You need to know the pulse of the people who you are working with ? If your team doesn?t like you then its sure that you have problems in achieving your goal. As a manager, you have to deal with people, every day, every moment. Remember, they are the most critical resource for the team to succeed and ultimately for your success.
Ensure that you render support to your team at all hard times, support in emotional, personal and technical terms, whenever they need. Failing to do so, you lose an opportunity to build a batter team.
? Give chances for self-correction
People do mistakes and no one is perfect ? So give them opportunities to identify it and correct themselves.
Do not always try to jump on each and every small thing you feel is incorrect. You may have to at times, forgive mistakes and let one realize it. This is important because that gives one an opportunity to correct himself and realize how important it is for him to not repeat this again and how much you as a manager believe in him/her and also that, you have not tried to take this as an opportunity to sabotage him or to prove that you are better.
But depending on the criticality of the issue you may have to take corrective actions at times, right at the first instance, where you do not have a second chance. So, in such cases talk to your team and explain them how dangerous this mistake was and how vital it is to not have such issues crop up again.
Give a Chance!
? Learn, Share and Collaborate ? And do it CONTINOUSLY
Information is a constantly growing and intangible asset, you will always feel lack of it!
It is very important, as an individual and as a team, to stay abreast with the new technologies along with building expertise and knowledge in many existing ones – The world is fast and constantly changing. In such an environment it is important to ensure that knowledge is captured and grown at every possible step. SO, encourage your team to learn new things, to share their learning?s. To ensure that these happen – build platforms that create equal opportunity and sustainable momentum forums, come up with initiatives that help one achieve this, at times create incentive based programmes so that, in lieu of getting the incentives, team members get immaterialist benefits too.
Never Stop Learning and as a manager ensure that you have an environment that helps sustain this philosophy.
? Team Building ? It?s a Team of members and NOT just a group of individuals!
As any team starts, it is first a group of differently focused individuals with varied strengths and capabilities, it is then, later, once everyone realize their goal, they form a TEAM, a single achieving entity
As a team working towards a common goal, it is very important that everyone supports the cause, it is vital that the team realizes that they always WIN as a team and the failure of one is the failure of everyone else. To build such an environment, the group should become a team, all the people should gel with each other, irrespective of their personal differences, seniority or knowledge.
And as a manager, you need to ensure that you create and sustain such environment, some of the ways could be – by organizing team outings, celebrating member birthdays, celebrating a team achievement?s and recognizing people efforts.
Ensuring a good atmosphere in the team will also ensure many other important parameters like people satisfaction, free and open communication, team work, sharing and caring for other team members and many others.
? You do not know everything
Admitting that you do not know something or that you are wrong, is the modest of way saying, You?ve grown a little wiser
A manager is a human being too! He too, would not know many things, just like any of us. So It?s perfectly OK, as a manager or as any individual to say no if you don?t know. But what will you do then, you cannot just stop there! ?Yes, I do not know, BUT I WILL FIND IT OUT?, Yes this is what that counts.
DO NOT make the mistake of trying to answer something for a question that you have no idea about, do not try to fill up the blanks. By doing so, you are openly sabotaging your reputation (I believe you wouldn?t do so of you have a reputation!)
? Build leaders ? Share leadership
Create and groom leaders, provide/create opportunities, that way you grow far higher and become a far better leader.
Why do some people try not to share their knowledge? I guess there are two reasons,
One, they think that by doing so their position/job is under threat and later he/she can outperform him
Two, they like to take the pride of knowing it, boast about their knowledge
I say, both of this, are nothing but pure display of unprofessionalism. If you see anyone doing so, or you yourself in to this, COME OUT OF IT. Think! Are you gaining anything at all? If he/she is better than you, has better potential than you, it is definite that they will reach their goal. You doing so may just create some disturbances in their goal, but sooner or later they will achieve it.
Well, here are some definite reasons why I urge everyone should believe in this.
By sharing your knowledge,
You get to offload yourself from some responsibility. Now when any one needs to know about the same thing, they don?t have to always come to you again, you can ask them to reach out to whom you already shared your knowledge with.
You also have ensured that you can move on to a bigger role as moving from this will not create any knowledge holes. On this aspect, I believe the organization plays an important role too, it should identify such strong leaders and help them move on and provide more and more opportunities for them to build such eco system.
? Motivate the Team
Inspire and Stimulate – There are many people, waiting to realize their strengths and capabilities
Motivation is a very important driving force, and once created and sustained is like a self kick-starting process that never, fails. The motivation factor varies from one individual to another and it is very important as a manager to realize and understand what motivates your team.
A motivated team can deliver much better results in terms of timely deliverables and self satisfaction then a demotivated or a normal team. No single technique works for all teams or all individuals, just like setting expectations, so you need to figure out the SUPERSET that will make your team motivated to deliver, to deliver better.
