Management Mastery

Making a decision is only half the battle for a good manager. The second half is getting the decision implemented. In this episode, we cover how the good manager gets and keeps their staff on board with their decisions.

The manager’s job is to make decisions. Effective decision-making is critical to effective management. In this episode we discuss the process of good decision-making. We cover the important steps in decision-making from identifying the problem through gathering the necessary information and deciding on the best option if more than one are available.

We also discuss the role of intuition in making a decision and the importance of involving staff at every step.

Everyone has clients. It is critical, no matter what your function, that you clearly understand who your clients are, what your clients need from your department and how to best meet those client needs. Clients can be in the company (e.g., other departments, company employees, etc.) or outside (i.e., those who buy your company's products or services). What is important is that you have a clear idea of who they are and how your department is meant to serve their needs. It is also important that you build an on-going relationship with your client(s) so that you are constantly aware of their needs and how well your department is or is not meeting them.

One of the first, and very important, tasks of a new manager is to begin to evaluate the staffing and structure of their department to ensure it is aligned so as to be most effective in meeting the goals and objectives of their new department. Initially, this consists largely of systematically observing and listening to clients, management, and high-performing staff to identify the department's strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses. Only then, and in discussions with their management, staff and customers, should the new manager begin to make needed changes. These changes must be made cautiously, being sensitive to the feelings and perceptions of the more valuable staff, so that the changes are seen in a positive light.

Understanding the underlying emotional and other, often unspoken, attitudes and beliefs that may motivate staff is critical to good management. 

The signs of an unmotivated employee are not hard for a manager to spot and we will go into those.  What is sometimes less obvious is the negative impact such employees can have on a department.  While it isn’t always “contagious”, a lack of motivation can spread to others in the group. 

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, values and motives and how they affect one’s interactions with people in the workplace and their own job performance. Self-control is the ability to control one’s thoughts, feelings and actions. One of the things that makes lack of self-awareness a problem is that, when asked whether they are self-aware, 95% of people answered that they were. However, research done at Harvard found that only about 10-15% of people actually are. In other words, while a lack of self-awareness is relatively easy to spot in others, we rarely see it in ourselves.

Effective communication is one of the most important skills a good manager must have. In this episode, we review not only what makes one a good communicator, but also things that many do that get in the way of effective communication including blaming the audience for not understanding what is being communicated, and not following up to make sure one's communication was accurately received and understood.

It is critical that your staff feel comfortable with giving you bad news or telling you about problems when they occur. This involves establishing a level of trust with your staff where they can feel that giving you such news will not result in negative consequences for them. This episode centers on how to build that level of trust with one's staff and maintain it.

It's never pleasant to get negative feedback from one's boss. But how a manager deals with the bad news can sometimes be more important than the news itself. The same can be true for positive feedback. Responding appropriately in both types of situations is often critical to a manager's success. This episode covers how to anticipate and respond to both positive and negative feedback from one's boss.