Posts Tagged ‘Managing’

1. Get to know your team

   A huge part of your success is related to your ability to get results through others. If you are to get the best from others, you need to know your team and their respective strengths.

2. Build relationships

   You need to build relationships with your team but you also need to build relationships with others across the organisation. This might even include partner organisations.

3. Involve your team

   If there are some changes to be made, involve your team in generating possible solutions. Listen to their ideas; you might just be a little surprised on the quality of their contributions.

4. Focus on priorities

   There are always lots of things that could be done but you need to focus on priorities.

5. Start small

   Tempting as is might seem, going straight for a huge transformation or change early on is a huge risk. So start small and build momentum.

What simple tips based on your own experience, would you add?

Duncan Brodie begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting 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

If you are in a management role, your priority should be to manage. The trouble is that, before we become managers, we are often seen as valued employees because we are able to gets lots of things done. So how can you shift the balance?

1. Remember that managing is a priority, not something you do when there is nothing else to do.
2. Set aside specific chunks of time when you are available to deal with management issues. That means blacking them out in the diary.
3. Make sure that you are doing only what you need to be doing and delegating the rest.
4. Make sure that your boss understands that you expect to have time to manage.

The truth is that creating the time to manage is often one of the biggest challenges you face. So start to make it a priority.

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

If you are a manager or leader, an important part of your role will be to appraise performance.

At the same time, I have noticed that this is an area where managers and leaders often struggle.

So what can you do to get better at appraising performance?

1. Make sure that people have clear objectives at the start against which you can assess performance.
2. Set the meeting in context and make it clear what the meeting is and is not about.
3. Encourage the person being appraised to first give their views on how they have performed.
4. When providing your insights, highlight both positives and opportunities for improvement.
5. Give specific examples. These bring alive the feedback that you are providing.
6. Spend time talking about future aspirations.
7. Keep the focus on helping others to achieve their optimal performance.

The reality is that some simple adjustments can revolutionize your skills in appraising performance.

So what’s your best tip to getting better at appraising performance?

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

If you are reading this, the chances are that you are already a good manager and want to be an even better manager.

So what can you do?

1. Believe in yourself as a manager and don’t let doubt stop you from taking action.
2. Cut yourself some slack and recognise that you don’t need to be great at everything.
3. Learn how to invest your time wisely so that you don’t become overloaded.
4. Find out the strengths of your team and start to utilise them.
5. Start listening more to the feedback from others so that you don’t get surprises too often.
6. Make managing something you make time for rather than viewing as an optional extra.
7. Keep developing yourself.

At the end of the day, some simple changes can make an huge impact.

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

While doing one of my regular sessions at the gym recently it occurred to me that there were many things that we can learn about leading and managing from the way we approach and what we do when it comes to working out.

 

So what are the key things that we can learn about leadership and management success from our gym workouts?

 

We need to have a goal

 

Most of us decided to join the gym for a specific reason.  It might have been to lose weight, build our stamina, help manage our stress levels, fun or just to maintain good health.  If we want to achieve success as a leader or manager we need to have clear goals.

 

Start small and build from that point

 

I can remember when I first ever went to the gym about 10 years ago.  The training plan I had was focused on doing a little bit on a range of exercises.  I did not try and jump straight to wild challenges in terms of times on the cardio machines and the weights I was lifting.  When new in post as a leader or manager, don’t try to go for glory from the outset, focus on achieving some easy wins.

 

It’s a long term project

 

When you start something new, especially exercise, you tend to find that you get pretty dramatic improvement initially, you plateau and then seem to struggle to get up to the next level.  As a leader or manager chances are that you will make some quick improvements and during the first couple of months it can feel like you are on the crest of a wave.  However, what you are really looking for is sustained success over the long term, so view leading and managing as a long term project.

 

We all need to do maintenance

 

When working out we know that it is important to do our stretching if we are to avoid injury or damage.  Most managers and leaders started in a particular professional discipline.  Even if you have a broader role now, it is vital that you maintain your knowledge and keep your skills up to date through continuing professional development.

 

 

Bottom Line – Just like working out, your aim as a manager or leader is to achieve long term sustained success.  So what do you need to start focusing on to achieve more success?

 

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to be successful managers and leaders.  For more information about his Services and Programmes click here

In many organisations, once you have proven your abilities, the next logical step is to move into management.  While on the face of it this might appear sensible, it is worth consciously deciding if it is right for you.  So what are the key questions to ask yourself?

1. What Do You Want?

The obvious reply is more money.  The reality is that money is rarely a huge motivator in the longer term.  You might want challenging work, to make a contribution, to continually grow, to become the technical expert in your field.  Will a move into management take you closer to what you want?  Take the time to find out what really matters to you.

2. What Is Life Really Like As A Manager?

You can read books, articles, listen to podcasts or speakers that will tell you about management.  What you need to know is what it is really like.  Speak to those in management roles.  See if you can shadow some managers for a few days to see what the job is like.

3. What Skills, Knowledge and Personal Attributes Do You Need To Succeed?

Managing is very different to doing.  There are a whole set of skills, knowledge and attributes you need to succeed.  For example:

• Influencing

• Directing

• Taking responsibility

• Motivating

• Delegating

• Problem solving

• Project Management

Take the time to find out about the skills, knowledge and personal attributes you will need in your organisation, industry or specialism.

4. What Are You Really Great At?

Find out about yourself.  Assess your own strengths and get feedback from others.  The idea is to get an idea of where you excel.  Once you know this you can start to consider if management and you are a good fit.

5. Where Do You Struggle?

Knowing your strengths is vital.  Of equal importance is understanding where you struggle.  Assess yourself and get feedback from others.  Use this as a basis of personal development planning.

6. Do Your Strengths Greatly Exceed Your Weaknesses?

Having strong foundations to build on is essential.  If you find that your strengths far outweigh your weaknesses you have excellent foundations to build on.

7. Is The Time Right?

It can be tempting to be lured by the salary increase but ask yourself is the time right to move to management.  Indicators that it might be include:

• Possessing the right qualities

• Having positive feedback

• A desire for a new challenge

• Feeling that you have achieved all that you can in a task based role

• A readiness for change

8. What Do I Need To Focus On If The Time Is Not Right?

If you decide that you want to move into management eventually but not at the current time, start to put a development plan in place to:

• Build your strengths

• Work on your weaker areas

• Get you into a state of readiness

Ask for the help you need to achieve your plan and ultimate goal.

Moving into management is a major decision.  Treat it as such and you will move into it ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities.

As a manager you need to deliver results and support the team you manage. So what are my top 5 tips to being a better manager:

1. Be clear on what is expected from you
2. Use our time effectively
3. Know your team and what motivates them to deliver
4. Know your own strengths and weaknesses so that you spend your time doing what you do best
5. Keep learning and developing yourself

As a manager one of your primary goals is to get results through others.  So what mistakes might you be making in managing your team?

1. Not setting clear expectations
2. Not delegating work
3. Failing to provide challenging or motivating work for staff
4. Focusing all of your attention on getting things done without considering the needs of your people
5. Failing to stand back periodically and look for areas where you could improve how you work

Do any of the above apply to you and what else would you add to the list?

One of the biggest challenges facing those taking on a management or supervisory role is finding the time to manage.  It can sometimes feel like that you have 100% of your time allocated to doing tasks and the only way to fit in the management part of the job is to do lots of unpaid extra hours.  So how can you start to address this dilemma?

Be clear on what is expected of you

As a new manager you need to get absolute clarity on what is expected of you and how your performance in the job will be measured.  The last thing you want is to get to your appraisal and find out that you have been aiming for the wrong target.

Set aside time for managing

If you do a 40 hour week and you know that management will take up about 40% of your time, block out 16 hours in your calendar each week and set up a schedule of things that you will work on.  It might be appraisals, work planning, recruiting, staff training, customer surveys, management meetings to name a few.

Let go of the jobs you do not need to do

You might love doing that piece of analysis work on excel that you have always done but you know deep down that someone else can do it.  Train them and let go of it.

Be accessible but manage interruptions

Managers love to talk about having an open door policy but make sure that people understand that this does not mean they can interrupt you whenever it suits them.  Have slots when your team can come to you to discuss issues and make sure people know when they are.  With e-mails, set aside times in you day to deal with them.  If it a real emergency someone will call you.  You may also need quiet time to focus on a report or presentation.  Divert your phone to someone else if you can or to voicemail.

Build in some space in your schedule

Things crop up that you did not expect or anticipate, so make provision for these in your schedule so that you can be flexible and responsive.

Ask for help if you are getting overloaded

We all have blind spots.  If you are finding that you are getting overloaded and cannot seem to find a way through, ask for help.  Merely sitting down with someone else and asking them to take a look at the challenges with you and help find solutions can get you back on track and delivering great results.

At the end of the day there is no magic solution but taking control is a powerful first step.