What makes a good manager?

Manager is a person whose responsibility is to plan and supervise other employees’ actions. While everyone can graduate in management, not all of the alumni should look for a career as any sort of supervisor. What are the qualities of a good manager?

How to manage the team?

Balancing between being a supervisor and keeping subordinates friendly is a tricky thing to do. Not only clear direction and communication are needed, but also the ability to convince those who are not committed to the plan.

What a good leader does is relying on team’s strengths and continuous improvement of their weaknesses. Also, managers should always remember to praise their workers, not only by saying “good job” or so. The tricky thing about being a manager is to bring some fun to work without distracting the team. As per Gallup’s research, appreciated workers can be much more effective.

An important thing to do is to give the team the feeling that they are important for the company. Emphasize that their work is crucial and should be done quickly and correctly, as some more decisions and actions depend on it. At the same time, a good leader should balance being employees’ representative and still part of the team. Meaning, sometimes they have to take a very tough role of disagreeing and fighting for the team with supervisors in private, while communicating some unpleasant (from department’s point of view) decisions.

Keep planning and let your employees plan

Planning and organization is one of the most important things at work. Without those, full-fledged work is impossible. While a good manager should be able to plan a lot of work on his/her own, it does not mean (s)he should not allow his/her subordinates to do so for themselves.

A good manager supervises his/her co-workers without imposing his/her will on them if (s)he does not have to. Although, if they see someone is not managing to plan their work efficiently, it is manager’s role to find a solution — not in front of the others. As the most tricky part is to lead people’s work, while still allowing them to feel important and qualified enough for the job.

When problems arise

Manager should have high problem-solving skills, which means the team should feel completely comfortable at work and, at the same time, should be able to solve any matters that stand in front of them. The decisions which are supposed to be made might be quite easy or pretty tough. Good leader should be able to face both types.

Some of the projects and cases at work are non-standard. A good leader should help his/her subordinates go through it as easily as it is possible. While usually the manager is not a part of the project itself and only supervises it, (s)he should still be skilled enough to take a part in working — if needed.

Those who are responsible for managing people should know that they are mainly responsible for people quitting jobs. They can make the subordinates feel appreciated or quite the opposite. While no one said managing a team of workers is easy, success with them is definitely worth the effort.