If you possess effective management traits, your staff are probably a lot more content and productive. Learn about the skills you need to develop to be an effective manager.
Do you know the biggest reason people leave their jobs? Surprisingly, it isn’t because they want more money, it’s because they hate their boss.
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a boss, a manager, or someone who has a more informal leadership role. If that person doesn’t have effective management traits, chances are all of the people underneath them are unhappy.
If you take the time to develop the skills of effective managers, the people who work for you will be much happier, more efficient and more likely to stay with your company over the long term.
1Why Most People Don't Have Effective Management Traits
One of the biggest reasons that so many managers have don’t have the skills of effective managers is because they were promoted because they did great work.
This is a problem because there usually isn’t any additional training done to help them develop their management skills.
2Traits of an Effective Manager Start With Listening Skills
This may be the biggest complaint from people - that nobody listens to them. One of the best things that you can do when you gain a position of leadership is to schedule one on one meetings with each person, just to talk to them.
Don’t treat these meetings as a list of questions to ask. Just talk to each person in a conversational way. Find out what they like about their job and what they don’t like. You should also take a little time to learn about who they are as a person. This will make them feel like they are valued as a person and they will want to work harder for you.
This shouldn’t just be one meeting when you start working in a leadership role. Characteristics of an effective manager include continuing a dialogue with your employees. As people get more comfortable with you, they will give you more valuable information about the pulse of the company and how things can be improved.
3Check in With Them
If you want to develop effective management traits, you should continue to briefly check in with your staff. Each time you walk through the office, briefly stop and talk to someone just to find out how their day is going.
You will be amazed at how often the question “what kind of stuff are you seeing in your work” leads to great ideas on how to make the business better.
4Find Out Their Long Term Plans
After you have been talking with people for a while, effective managers start asking about long term goals. You can ask them this as part of your first meeting, but you are likely to get a more honest answer after you have developed more trust with them.
Knowing their long term goals is a great way to learn how to motivate them. Sometimes it can even help you restructure responsibilities or find the right person for a particular project that is coming up.
People who believe you are interested in helping them reach their goals will work much harder for you and for the organization. This is a very effective management trait to have.
5Discover Their Learning Style
Many people new to a leadership role make the mistake of believing that everyone learns new things in the same way. This means that when new information is presented to the group, it is usually only presented in the way that the leader themselves usually learns things.
The reality is that some people will only learn new things if they can read about them. Other people have to actually do something and walk through the new steps to learn it. There are even more people who are going to have to just start working so they can make mistakes on their own. That is how they learn best.
One of the effective management traits that you should work to develop is to recognize the learning style of each person, and make an attempt to teach them new things in that way.
