Four Essential Management Talents To Develop
There are lots of different views about what makes a manager successful but using the following four Talents will get you a long way in terms of practical success and a strong reputation amongst your peers.
Thinking
- Be curious, pursue knowledge and experience and encourage this amongst your staff
- Know and understand the processes and systems that you are responsible for, making appropriate challenges where necessary
- Use data to identify the root cause of defects, system errors and poorly performing operations
- Build simple and measurable solutions that everyone can understand and work with
- Own the team’s processes, proactively anticipate likely problems and have a contingency plan ready that everyone can work with
Connecting
- Listen carefully making sure that you have two-way conversations with team members, colleagues and other more senior managers
- Show appreciation that is meaningful and which is done on a regular basis
- Invest in discussions that matter making sure that you always follow through on commitments to team members and other colleagues that you have connections with
- Connect employees to the customer – make sure that everyone understands who the customer is, what they need and why they are important
- Own the team’s problems – never push problems down onto people especially if they are not able to resolve them
Teaching
- Encourage discussion and debate to sharpen thinking, always knowing that you do not have the answers
- Ask insightful questions and expect good answers
- Provide timely and specific feedback that helps staff improve what they are doing and which motivates them
- Lead by example so that people can use what you do to help them to do what they do
- Own the team’s development but always knowing that their success will determine your own success
Delivering
- Create a culture of safety where there are no risks or potential hazard, allowing staff to do their tasks in a consistent and reliable manner
- Be persistent in what you are driving forward and always be focused on details
- Make the right decisions under pressure after thinking through possible courses of action carefully and systematically
- Deliver on customer expectations as a bare minimum, ideally exceeding them
- Own team’s performance but always knowing that their performance will determine your own performance
Developing the Talents above require little head-scratching and should come naturally as a framework for a committed and motivated manager.
Good Luck!
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