5 Ways to be a more effective manager

As a manager or director its sometimes easy to just say “we’re not hiring the right people”, or “the team is underperforming”. Much of the time, the team you have can complete the mission you’re charting to accomplish. Here are five ways to be a more effective manager in your business.

Set clear expectations, provide guidance, and a path for success with each team member.

As a manager, its much more effective to provide clear expectations upfront for projects, weekly tasks, and KPIs. Stepping in periodically and offering additional guidance will help your team member better understand the standard you’re expecting. Also, by providing a “path for success” for each team member (upfront) gives them confidence in you as a manager, the company, and helps remove any issues of perceived job instability (so common in todays economy).

This path for success could simply be outlining expectations for the role, what’s most important for you, and what role you see them playing long-term on your team. I remember being told by a person in leadership my first month that I will be their right-hand man, and they would delegate projects to me with autonomy to implement against our annual goals. That not only gave me confidence, but helped me understand how I could lead and manage projects for the business.

Keep an open environment for new ideas, and allow team members to contribute to the big picture stuff.

As a manager, I’ve been complimented many times on how open I am to hear all opinions and advice before deciding on a path and working to unite everyone around the vision. There are no dumb questions or opinions. There have been many times when someone gave an opinion we didn’t like for a specific project, but then later repurposed for something else. Always keep an open mind, and treat team member like their opinion matters (and it does).

Also, whether they are an executive or an intern, always ask them what they think we should do. You might be surprised by the recommendation, and at the very least - they will feel heard, important, and like they were able to contribute in a “bigger picture” way. You’d be surprised, sometimes the person playing with spreadsheets has a great creative idea for a campaign OR the sales person thinks of a great key messaging theme.

Be a positive brand ambassador and encourage a similar mindset.

Being a positive brand ambassador is more than just saying positive things about the company. It’s encouraging co-workers to do their best or convincing them that they are important and adding value. It’s about winning over clients with the right attitude and sharing the best stuff about your company.

Negative behavior about the company, the job, leadership, or employees can be toxic. It’s like word of mouth advertising. For every customer that has an amazing brand experience with said company - they tell 3 people about it. However, for every customer that has a negative brand experience - they tell 10 people about it. This number is even higher on average today due to the digital revolution and social media.

Whole companies can get destroyed by negative Glass Door reviews, an employee that bad-mouths their own company to an important client, or a sales person who doesn’t believe in what they are selling on a daily. Be a champion of expressing and encouraging a positive mindset. Being an incredible cheerleader for your company is one of the most underrated abilities and so very important across culture for a company to become number one in their industry.

Recognize individual achievement in a group setting. Provide constructive criticism 1-on-1.

The worst thing you can do as a manager is scold an employee in front of other people, especially team members or a customer. Not only does this demoralize the team member, but it also demoralizes everyone who hears about said incident.

Also, with the workforce becoming much more global, in some cultures it is normal for whole teams to up and quit because of such shameful communication. In the US this kind of mass quitting would be more common in the tech culture.

One of the top things that motivates employees to perform at their highest and want to stay with a company long-term is feeling valued. Knowing that your company sees exactly what you’re contributing to their growth, and doesn’t view you as a number or an easily replaceable wheel on the company car.

How you can be more effective as a manager in this area is by regularly recognizing individual employee achievement in a group setting. Be specific about what the team member did that was impressive, high quality, or helped achieve a bigger company goal.

On the occasion that you do have to provide negative feedback or reprimand an employee, do it 1-on-1 in private and in the most constructive way possible. This means being specific about what they did wrong, and specific about what they can do to get back on track.

Recognize employee value, and utilize team member legacy knowledge.

I’ve talked a little bit about recognizing value, but this goes a step further. It is so common in company culture these days for some parts of the executive team to have generic views of mass poor performance, not hiring the right people, or mistaking engine problems with tire rotation.

The biggest threat to company long-term viability (aside from recurring financial losses) is to unknowingly eliminate top talent or let go of key employees with legacy knowledge. A bad culture in a company of 250 employees could see the business get destroyed after several years of firing or letting people resign that hold key brand legacy knowledge or are actually key contributors to the businesses success.

It is not worth it for a billion dollar market cap company to experience deep financial decline, because they wouldn’t double Suzie and Bill’s $100k salary, provide a merit based promotion, pay a high bonus to Joe the top salesperson, fire a toxic executive, or give marketing the added $500k budget for developing a new sales channel.

Having team members with the brand knowledge and history within each department helps new hires excel within the team, promotes efficient & effective execution of programs, and can help avoid future mistakes. Employees with brand legacy knowledge know what has worked and what hasn’t the past 5 or 10 years.

Many leaders find themselves in this constant “lets try something new” mindset. This can be detrimental for a company that is already a well oiled machine. Having people that understand how to add to the strategy, rather than destroy what’s allowing the company to dominate competition is extremely valuable and often overlooked when cuts are being made.

Thus, identifying and retaining key talent in every department and employees with deep brand legacy knowledge is critical for long-term business stability and future financial growth achievement success.

I hope you found these five tips valuable. If you’re looking for mentoring or coaching as a leader or business owner - you can schedule a free initial 30-minute coaching session here.