One huge area where managers fail is being involved with their people. No, I don’t mean they go bowling or drinking with them. They are involved with them on a professional level at work. Now the real question is, what do I mean by ‘involved’?
Involved is a state of mind as well as a physical interaction with your entire organization. You have to make constant appearances, have constant open two-way communication. You have to listen to your people, hear their fears, ideas, thoughts, concerns. You have to stand in between them and …
Yes, I paused there. You have to stand between them and … the leadership of your company, the management that they get frustrated with, the coworkers that they get upset with, the rules that they disagree with, the things that make them unhappy at work. And you have to stand between them and those things without creating a barrier, a division or a wall the separates them from those things. You have to be the person they can go to with all of these concerns and you have to be able to calm them, salve their fears, communicate effectively with their concerns and help them see how what they do, want to do, don’t want to do can all be worked out by staying within the parameters of the norms associated with their job. And that sometimes, they will have to simply accept what they cannot change and you have to offer them the wisdom to know when that is.
You will become a great manager by communicating effectively on all of these fronts especially when they do not perceive you as having done any of those things. Then you will have become a great manager that they will support, stand by, and do things for because they will believe in you as much as you believe in them.
And all of that must be done without alienating them from any other person or part of your organization. Can you do that? Do you know how to do that? And if you don’t, then what you need to do to become that GREAT Manager is start learning how to do that by 1) Reading the right things 2) Listening to the right tapes/cd’s/programs 3) attending or associating with the right people or seminars that can help you learn and grow into the person you want to be.
And helping your people do the same things.
I am Steve Sapato and I train managers to become GREAT MANAGERS. You can learn more at my website mentalprosperityblog.com and write to me at steve@stevesapato.com for answers to yoru questions and help in becoming.
