Managers realize that it’s always been hard to use their manager skills to attract and retain the top quality talent that they need.  

It seems as though it has become even harder to do this lately. What  seems to be a key way that managers can make this happen is if they use  their manager training to understand what workers, especially  millennials, are really looking for: company culture.

If we were to list out all of the important manager skills that a  manager needs to have, what would be on that list? 

Even more  importantly, what would be at the top of that list?  It turns out that what should be at the top of the list is the ability to make decisions well. Research has shown that how we go about making decisions is just as important as what decisions we make. 

If we want to make  decisions the right way and we don’t have any manager training on how to  do this, how can we go about doing this?

The goal of every manager is to become a respected manager. 

This is a  fine goal to have, but just exactly how can we make this happen? It  turns out that one important step in getting your team to respect you is  for you to make the practice of transparency important. Why should you  bother with this? Well, give some thought to doing the opposite thing.  Think about the last time you caught someone in the act of not being  transparent. Since then has your trust in that person ever fully  recovered? Clearly transparency is something that we need to work on as  managers. 

How can we do this?

So how good are you as a manager at showing your emotional intelligence  to your team? 

A lot of us would say that we’re not very good at doing  this, but then we’d follow this up by saying something like “I’m not  that type of person.” It turns out that you’d be wrong. 

We can all show  emotional intelligence to our team and all we have to do is learn how to  go about doing it.

So what makes a manager a great manager? 

For the longest time companies  have believed that personality characteristics such as charm and  charisma are the manager skills that made a manager successful. Guess  what – it turns out that they may have been wrong. New studies are showing that the thing that can make a manager great is something that everyone has been overlooking – humility. 

This new insight is starting to change how people look at managers and understand what it takes to be a great manager.

As managers, where we work will probably play a big role in how we  develop our manager skills. 

If we could all choose where we worked, I’m  pretty sure that a lot of us would all agree that working for Google would probably be a good choice. Once upon a time Google was a small  start-up company. Since then, they have grown and they now employ over  70,000 workers. It turns out that all those people needed leaders. And  not just any leaders, but people who can do it in an environment of  incessant change and planetary scale. 

Just exactly how has Google gone about providing this kind of manager training?

What is it that every manager is hoping for? 

Why it is to use your  manager skills to be promoted, of course. When that special day comes, are you going to be ready? You’ll get a new job title, perhaps more money, maybe even a new  office. However, it’s not going to be long before your mind is going to  start to be filled with second thoughts. If you are not careful, you could end up sabotaging yourself. 

Upon getting promoted, there are several things that you are going to have to get busy doing.

There has been a great deal of coverage in the papers and on television about sexual harassment in the workplace. 

Male managers have been struggling to find ways to use our manager skills to deal with these claims and, of course, how to prevent them from happening in the first place.  Managers just don’t seem to know what the appropriate response is –  we’ve never had any manager training on what to do. 

What managers need  to understand is what we should NOT do when someone comes to us with an allegation of sexual harassment.

As managers, we are under a great deal of pressure to use our manager  skills to find ways to get the most out of our teams. 

We can try a lot  of different techniques; however, all too often we get the same results –  nothing changes. The good news for us is that it turns out that if we  want to create more open relationships with the members of our team all we have to do is to learn how to ask questions the right way. 

How hard can that be to do correctly?

Ok manager, how is managing those millennials working out for you?

I  hope that you’ve come up with ways to make peace with them because it is  just about time for the next batch of workers to show up on your  doorstep: Generation Z.  Do you have any manager training for dealing with this? This group of  workers will be arriving battle-scarred, socially awkward, and driven by  money. 

Are you going to be ready for this management challenge?