Archive for the ‘Management Qualities and Traits’ Category

If you are good at what you do and are the type of person who gets things done, sooner or later you will find yourself in the position where you have to manage others. While some make that shift from being the doer to the manager with easy, others find it a struggle.

So what actions could you take to become an even better manager?

Action 1: Be Honest With Yourself

It is really easy to fall into the trap of believing that because you are the manager you need to be the best at everything. The reality is you don’t and cannot be the best at everything. Stop pretending that you know it all.

Action 2: Invest Time To Save Time

One thing so many managers complain of is having too much to do and not enough time. However unlike a computer you cannot buy an upgrade in the amount of tome you have. So what’s the answer? Make a one off investment of time to train someone else and then assign responsibility for a task to them.

Action 3: Find Out What Motivates

On just about every management and leadership course I run people bring up motivation as an issue. When I ask them when was the last time they asked employees what motivates them, most acknowledge it was no time recently. If you don’t know what motivates others you are always going to find it a struggle.

Action 4: Don’t Avoid Problems

It might be tempting to avoid problems in the hope that they will somehow disappear into thin air. In reality this never happens. The problem just gets worse. Deal with them rather than letting them hang around like a bad odour.

Action 5: Show Trust

Trust takes time to gain and can be lost in minutes. Truth is the best way to gain trust is to show others you trust them.

Action 6: Never Forget What It Was Like At The Bottom

As people climb the career ladder it is easy to lose sight of what life was like when you were just starting out. Always try and stay connected to what it is really like at the bottom of the hierarchy when you had little or no experience.

Action 7: Delegate A Lot

Delegation is vital to your success and has many benefits in terms of developing and growing others. It also gives a huge message to others that you really trust them.

Action 8: Try Not To Criticise In Public

Yes this requires a lot of self discipline but when you criticise in public you run the risk of losing the respect of the individual and potentially your whole team.

Action 9: Praise and Acknowledge

When you praise someone it lets others know you are noticing and care about them. Remember too that you can acknowledge effort as well as results.

Action 10: Accept That It Is Ongoing Work In Progress

Despite what you might read you never reach the point where you are the perfect manager. You have to keep learning and growing in order to continue to deliver success.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps highly rated professionals to become high performing leaders and managers. He invites you to sign up for his free management mastery course

One of the many key traits of successful managers is their level of self awareness. Raising your self awareness comes from reflecting on how you think you are doing and asking for feedback from others.

On the face of it this should not be that difficult to do. On the other hand recent research from the CIPD shows that there is a huge gap between perceptions and reality among the UK’s 8 million managers.

While I was expecting that there would be some differences between what employees and managers thought, the differences to say the least were stark.

Here are just a few of the things that the research highlighted.

Six in ten (61%) of managers claim they meet each person they manage at least twice a month to talk about their workload, meeting objectives and other work-related issues. However, just 24% of employees say they meet their managers with such frequency.

More than 90% of managers say they sometimes or always coach the people they manage when they meet, while only 40% of employees agree.

Three quarters (75%) of managers say they always/sometimes discuss employees’ development and career progression during one to ones, but just 38% of employees say this happens.

There are similar gaps in views between managers and employees on how often managers: joint problem solve with employees; discuss ideas employees might have to improve the business and; discuss employees’ wellbeing.

You can find a press release and access to the research in full here

With managers having a huge role to play in the success of the organisation there is clearly an opportunity to raise self awareness and at the same time gain greater engagement and ultimately bottom line results.

I wonder what your experiences have been when it came to self awareness among managers.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps highly successful professional people to become highly effective managers. He invites you to check out his free management mastery e-course.

Managing is a tough job. There are superiors and subordinates who have huge expectations of you. It can sometimes feel like you are piggy in the middle.

One of the challenges managers often face is a lack of self confidence. What can you do to be a more confident manager?

Don’t Put Unrealistic Expectations On Yourself
• Of course you want to give your best. At the same time you don’t want to set yourself up for failure. By all means set the bar high and challenge yourself but don’t lose sight of reality.

Drop The Misconceptions About What Being Confident Is

• Many people think being confident is all about being extroverted, cocky, bullish and being a know it all. It’s none of these things. Ultimately it is having the self belief and self awareness that you can achieve results.

Have A Decision And Action Bias

• Taking decisions and actions builds momentum. It also gives you feedback which you can use to make adjustments. Procrastination by comparison simply keeps you stuck.

Start Small And Build

• Whenever you try something new it is scary. All your doubts and fears show up. Starting small and achieving small successes can make a big difference.

Recognise You Are A Manager On Merit

• It is unlikely that those appointing you had no other choice. They appointed you on merit because they believed that you were the best person with the most potential.

Cut Yourself Some Slack

• You are a human being, not a human doing. Yes you will make mistakes. Yet in truth if you never make mistakes, you never learn and grow.

The Bottom Line: The reality is that there will be times when your confidence is high and other times when it will be low. When in the dip, make sure you tap into what made you successful in the past.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his management e-course  at http://www.goalsandachievements.co.uk/managers-main.html

If you are like most of us, you feel great when you step into a management role. You are full of hope and enthusiasm and feel that you are going to be really successful. A few months later, you are finding it a real struggle. Why is this and what can you do about it?

You have not made the shift in your mind

• I sometimes tell people that they need to promote themselves first in the mind. By that I mean to mentally step into the new role. If you don’t, you stay stuck doing what you always did.

You don’t make time for managing

• What probably got you promoted was your ability to get lots of things done. The trouble is that managing is all about getting results through others. If you don’t make the time for managing, people will think you are not interested in them and disengage.

You don’t believe in yourself

• We all have doubts from time to time. However, you need to remember that those who appointed you had belief in you and your abilities.

You try to please everyone

• It’s tempting to fall into this trap and, if we are honest, it is probably a trap that every manager has fallen into at some point. Accept that you will take decisions from time to time that won’t please everyone.

You avoid the difficult stuff

• Sometimes you will have performance issues with teams or individuals. You have two choices: ignore or do something about it. Avoiding the difficult stuff is never a good strategy in my experience.

The reality is that some simple changes can greatly change the results you achieve as a manager.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

1. Set out clear expectations of others.
2. Treat everyone fairly and with respect.
3. Provide regular, specific, actionable feedback to others.
4. Delegate effectively.
5. Build effective teams.
6. Praise others.
7. Don’t take all of the glory when things go well.
8. Don’t blame others when things go wrong.
9. Find out what motivates others.
10. Take an interest in the success of others.

What else would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Good managers stand out from mediocre managers because they focus on helping others achieve success. So how can you do this?

1. Find out about their career aspirations

   What I noticed when I worked in big organisations was that finding out the career aspirations of others was either avoided or stuck on to the end of an appraisal discussion. Taking the time to understand their career aspirations can make you stand out from the crowd.

2. Support their personal development

   Those achieving success will always need to develop themselves. Make a point of supporting their development, even if that means making a case on their behalf for investment.

3. Let them cover for people more senior than them

   This might just be for a couple of weeks while people go on holiday but it gives them some insight into what the role is like.

4. Send them on secondment

   To help them to build skills, get new experience or take on new challenges.

5. Get them involved in projects

   Projects are a greatly underused way of developing people.

6. Get them a coach or mentor

   Someone independent who can act as their professional sounding board.

The truth is some simple things can make a big difference. I wonder what you have found works well?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Survey after survey identifies that, more than anything else, people want feedback. More specifically, they want regular feedback.

In my experience, one of the big challenges facing managers and leaders is a shortage of time. As a result, some things get pushed down the list. Unsurprisingly, more often than not it is the people side of things that gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.

So why is this a big mistake?

1. Feedback lets people know how they are doing.
2. Feedback lets people know that, as a leader or manager, you care about others and their success.
3. Feedback provides the basis for people to get better at doing something.
4. Feedback acts as a strong motivator for people.
5. Feedback is the fuel of action and it is action that leads to results.

So how can you get better at providing feedback?

1. Make the time to do it.
2. Do it at the time.
3. Make it specific.
4. Make it useable. Vague feedback is not useable.
5. Do it regularly.

The truth is feedback is the greatest source of motivation. So what can you do more of to create feedback?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

One of the things that marks the very best managers and leaders from the mediocre ones is that the former take the initiative.

So what exactly do I mean by taking the initiative? Let’s look at an example:

Jane is a manager in a large organisation. She knows that there are many rules to comply with and organisational norms. Today she has come up against a challenge. She knows that the organisation guidance on the topic is vague. However, she takes time to clarify the outcome that she wants to get and maps out the first steps. In other words, she takes the initiative.

James is another manager in a large organisation. He specialises in playing the waiting game. He waits for the instructions, guidance or steps to come from someone else. As a result, he is seen as a plodder.

The truth is that if you want to get ahead in your career and stand out from the crowd, you need to be willing to take the initiative, to grab the bull by the horns.

So what’s your first step in taking the initiative?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Trait 1:
• Being a control freak and needing to be involved in everything.

Trait 2:

• Not clearly setting out your expectations of others.

Trait 3:

• Avoiding taking action and procrastinating excessively before taking decisions.

Trait 4:

• Passing the buck when things go wrong rather than taking responsibility.

Trait 5:

• Not giving feedback to others on how they are doing.

Trait 6:

• Dealing with performance issues publicly rather than privately.

Trait 7:

• Not following up when you have asked someone to deliver something.

What else would you add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

I recently had the opportunity to interview Joan Henshaw as part of a Virtual Leadership Telesummit.

Joan very kindly shared with me her thoughts to Skyrocketing Your Management Confidence.

One of the things that really struck a chord with me was what she shared around beliefs. During her call, she said that what she noticed was that:

1. Managers often felt that they did not have the right to manage.
2. Sometimes managers felt that people did not want to be managed.
3. Managers needed to be perfect at the everything.

Reflecting on these three things, it struck me that if we go around carrying these beliefs, it is no wonder that some managers struggle to be confident in their role.

So what other beliefs are you holding that are stopping you from being a highly effective manager?

Make a note of these and then really challenge whether they are true or just things you are making up.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here