As a manager, you have a lot of duties and responsibilities. Employees and execs constantly rely on you to make sure that your company is productive, effective and efficient, and those are not easy tasks. From dealing with employee training and engagement to managing performance levels, you are the captain of your company’s ship, and you have your hands full.
Don’t get lost in the details – focus on leading your team towards the big picture.
You may find that you spend most of your work days discovering unexpected issues and tracking the strategies used to overcome those problems. Because you are tasked with the comprehensive management plan for your company, it may be very difficult to accurately monitor the daily actions of all of your employees.
This is not unusual, but you are probably frustrated that all the work you had meant to accomplish does not always occur.
Even with your extensive daily to-do list for regular company business, there are three main tasks that you need to make time to do each and every day as the manager. By carefully planning the ways in which you assign and lead your team, these are the three things you should do each day in order for you and your company to be successful in the coming year.
Establish a Strong Team
Nothing pulls a company apart faster than a group of people that does not get along or that does not share a common business strategy. As a good leader, you need to make sure that all of your employees are bound together by a common and compelling purpose that draws them in and that convinces them of its importance.
When you are leading a unified group, you will notice that everyone believes that the needs of the company are more important than their own individual desires. The bonds between the members of a true team are formed on the unwavering belief that they will either succeed or fail as a unit, and this cohesion is the atmosphere that you want to build in your company.
A team with such a strong feeling of camaraderie is not built in a single day. In fact, you need to be diligent, working every day to build this bond by:
- creating a healthy and happy environment that celebrates employee success on a regular basis,
- building an atmosphere of teaching and of teamwork that encourages employees to engage with each other, and
- taking advantage of everyday work problems to refocus employees on your company vision.
Build Trust and Respect
When you are in the process of creating your team environment, you have to simultaneously build up the trust and the respect of your employees. When The Harvard Business Review interviewed almost 20,000 business employees, the group overwhelmingly pointed to the respect of their superiors as the single item that engages employees at work than anything else. If you want to have the respect and the support of your employees, it begins with the respect that you give them.
You can bark orders and make demands all day, but you need your employees to want to listen to you and to your vision for the business. When you give the appropriate respect and trust to your employees, you will feel those same forces coming right back to you.
Start creating trust by providing a network of constructive guidance for your employees. When you make promises, you need to follow through with them. You have to be fair and consistent in your treatment of your employees, refusing to play favorites while giving fair constructive criticism.
When you behave this way on a daily basis, you will gain the trust of your employees, and with this level of trust comes respect as well. Moreover, employees who feel respected by their managers show a higher rate of satisfaction at the workplace.
Make Improvement a Noticeable Process
It is easy to say that you are going to work toward building a team and toward creating more trust and respect, but telling yourself that you will begin doing it is not enough. You have to make these improvements public and noticeable to your employees as a visible part of your daily routine. This obvious show of good faith in your company is what will draw the support of the others.
A large part of your day as a successful manager should be spent setting clear and achievable goals for your team and for the individual members of your group.
Be sure that you are considering both short- and long-term goals, and make these objectives public knowledge to your team. Take the needs and talents of your employees into account, especially with individual goals.
Post these goals somewhere for everyone to see, and make sure that you follow up with them. Tracking team and individual performances and helping your employees overcome their obstacles to achieving those goals are a big part of your job as a good manager. Praise the people who are successful, and encourage the ones who need support.
Final Thoughts
Excellent business managers are the ones who get into the trenches with their employees to build trust and respect and who encourage team goals and teamwork ethic. Work with your employees to create and to work toward clear, fair and concrete company goals, and praise the group when progress is made. If you follow these three strategies, you will have a more successful company in 2017.
About the Author:
Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and content marketing consultant from Portland. Self-employed, she stays on top of the current trends in the business world. Connect with her on Twitter @LisaBMichaels.
