Whether you’re a new manager or you’ve been one for decades, you might be wondering how you can improve and serve as a better boss to your employees.
Unfortunately, poor management is a common reason why employees leave a company, even if they enjoy the role. A poor manager can cause stress, anxiety, and overall lower productivity as well as create a sour environment.
As a manager, it’s crucial to use the skills necessary to lead your team, delegate tasks, build relationships, and ensure that everyone has the tools and help they need. Without excellent leadership, no business can thrive or survive.
So, if you want to strengthen your management skills as soon as possible, here are 3 ways to help you get started.
Cultivate Self-Awareness
Without properly understanding the motivations behind your actions, it’s difficult to make changes for the greater good and improve as a manager. To improve in any area of your personal growth, you need to start with self-awareness.
Self-awareness means becoming aware of your feelings, character, and motives. It helps you understand who you are and why you make the decisions you do so you can do better moving forward. Confronting the truth might be hard, but it’s even worse to turn a blind eye to your shortcomings and not do anything to improve.
So, you can practice self-awareness as a manager by getting rid of your pride and owning up to your mistakes. No one is perfect and your team knows this, so when you mess up, it’s important to acknowledge it, apologize, and move on. This will also allow you to forgive your team’s mistakes and accept that they’ll happen even to the best employees.
Express Gratitude
If you’ve been struggling in your management position lately, it might feel difficult to feel grateful for the situation you’re in. But the beauty of gratitude comes from appreciating the moment for what it is instead of what you want it to be. During times of hardship, there are important lessons you can learn to become a better leader.
Instead of sticking to the vision of being the perfect manager, learn how to appreciate what you’ve learned and are continuing to learn as you go. Things rarely go exactly how you expect them to. The more you let go of the need to control everything and accept reality, the easier it’ll be to express gratitude and feel better.
At the end of each workday, take a few minutes to contemplate the day. Think about some of the things that happened, or didn’t happen, that you feel thankful for. Were your ideas received well by your team during a meeting? Did you have an insightful discussion with a team member that sparked your imagination? Whatever it is, expressing it makes a huge difference in how you feel.
Practice Fairness
Unfortunately, many managers and leaders of companies pick and choose favorites which doesn’t go unnoticed by other employees. This is harmful towards other team members and can create an unpleasant environment with a negative company culture.
To be a better leader, it’s crucial to practice fairness towards every employee and to treat everyone with the same respect. One person shouldn’t get more or less recognition or praise than the next and equal treatment should be mandatory across the board.
To eliminate favoritism in the workplace and be a fair manager, make sure to communicate equally with every employee and give each person the same amount of attention. If possible, you can conduct brief one-on-one meetings with each person to see how they’re doing, get to know each other, and ask if you can help them in any way.
Your Turn
If you want to build on your management skills, these tips are sure to help you get started. It’s crucial to build positive relationships with your team to create a comfortable environment and encourage productivity. How will you enhance your skills as a leader and manager?