So let’s face it. Talking about someone ending their own life is never a  pleasant discussion. However, as a manager you need to be prepared to  deal with this kind of event if someone on your team decides to take  their own life. 

If we can step away from the hard and cold fact that you  will now have to replace someone on your team, you need to understand  that when somebody commits suicide, it’s going to have a ripple effect on your organization. 

Just about the only thing that could make this even worse would be if they decided to end their life while at work. 

How’s that manager job going for  you? Are you finding that you can use your manager skills to have  enough time to get all of the things that you need to get done, done? If  you are like most of us, the answer is no. 

You  go into the office each day with a well made “to-do” list and then you  come home at night with most of that to-do list still undone. What’s  going on here? What’s going on is that life is knocking you for a loop.  It’s all of the little things that need to be done every day that are  preventing you from doing the bigger things that need to be  accomplished. 

How can a manager get more done?

So here’s some bad news for managers: right now employee turnover  (employees who leave) is currently at an all-time high. What this means  for you is that your team is at risk. 

If you don’t find  a way to use your manager skills to keep the members of your team happy  and engaged in their job, then guess what – they are going to leave.  If they leave, then all of a sudden your life just got a lot more  complicated as you are going to have to spent a great deal of money to  try to replace them. 

There has to be an alternative to all of this. 

As a manager, you will always be asked to do more things.  On top of what you have already signed up to do, people will drop by  your cube, catch your arm in the hall, and corner you in meetings and  will come up with additional things to add to the already full plate of  tasks that you have in front of you. 

It can be all too easy for us to  deal with these situations by simply saying “I’ll do that”. Do this  enough, and all too quickly you’ll discover that you are now juggling  too much for any one person to get done. 

When this happens, you need to  start to use the greatest skill that a manager has: focus. 

With a little luck, most of us spend our time trying to become good  managers. However, we realize that the world has a number of different  types of managers in it and this means that there are both good managers and bad managers out there.  

It turns out that one of the main reasons that employees leave a firm  is because they find themselves working for a bad manager. 

Although we  don’t want to become bad managers, it might be useful to take a close  look at what manager skills bad managers use to drive employees away so  that we don’t find ourselves doing these things. 

Oh my goodness – can you believe just how hard it is to find the right person to join your team?  

I mean think about it: we craft the perfect job description, wade  through a pile of resumes, use our manager skills  to interview far too  many people by phone, invite a few in to take up our day and meet with  us, and then finally make someone an offer. If we get lucky and they are  still available and are still interested in working for our company,  then perhaps we’ve found the next person to work for us. 

However, then  comes the most difficult part of the process which is the one that we’ve  had no manager training for: convincing them to not quit. 

Can anyone remember going to kindergarten? Way back then life was a lot  simpler. We all had a set of rules that were given to us on how to  behave (say “thank you”, be kind to others, listen to what the teacher  has to say, etc.). Now perhaps not everyone followed each of these rules  all of the time, but at least we all knew what the rules were  and could always refer back to them. 

Now move forward into the future  in which we are now living. Incivility and it’s close cousin bullying are becoming a bigger issue in the workplace. 

What is a manager to do? 

So congratulations, as a manager you are already a leader. However, if you are like most of us you could probably become a better leader. 

If you took the time to take a look at all of your manager skills, where do you think that your biggest leadership challenge lies?   The way that you can identify this is by spending some time thinking  about where you’ve had the biggest challenges – communications? Hiring?  Team performance? 

It turns out that there are three traits that define  managers who are good leaders. Perhaps we should be working on getting  some manager training and improving all of these…? 

As a manager, you are responsible for using your manager skills to  manage a team of professionals. This means that you have to spend time  with each member of your team in order to make sure that they have a  good understanding of where they want their career to go and how they  are going to achieve it. 

At the the same time, you need to have a good  understanding of where you want your career to go. 

Likewise, once you know what you want, you’re going to have to know how you can go about making it happen. 

So what kind of workplace do you work in? No, I’m not asking about the  kind of furniture you have, what the view out the window looks like, or  how comfortable the chairs are. Instead, what I’d like to know is just exactly how toxic is it?   

Surveys have been taken that reveal that 64% of people reported that  they were currently working with someone that they considered to be  toxic. A whopping 94% said that they had worked with someone who was  toxic at some point in their career. 

It looks like we may have a problem that has to be solved by a manager here using your manager skills.