Which Qualities Make You a Great Manager?

Which qualities make you a great manager? This article is for new and experienced managers, supervisors and small business owners who lead a team. It covers eight qualities (communication, creativity, trust instead of micromanagement, confidence, handling pressure, empathy, leading by example and appreciation) and, for each, how to build it. None of these are fixed traits; they are habits you can practice. A short example at the end shows several of them in one ordinary week.

Communication Skills
Creative Approach
Do not Micromanage
Confident
Handle Pressure
Empathy
Role Play
Appreciate Others
Example: A Week of Good Management
Final Words

Communication Skills

Managers need to deliver and receive a lot of information daily. So, a manager is supposed to be a good listener as well as a good speaker. As a manager, you must ensure that you have delivered the actual meaning of your conversation. Clear and comprehensive communication always left a mark.

How to Develop Communication Skills?

Make sure to communicate the true sense of the information. Also, take your time: rushing creates ambiguity. Effective communication always wants attention from both sides. So, make your listener pay attention and add exciting elements to the conversation to motivate it. Well, appreciation is also significant to keep the listeners engaged.

Creative Approach

What if a manager follows a boring routine from 9 AM to 5 PM? Employees will start losing motivation, for sure. So, you have to be creative with your managerial activities. To make a difference, you have to practice exciting approaches.

How to Practice Creative Approaches?

Market trends keep changing with the change in customers' interests. It would help if you also changed your traditional organizational culture. To break the stereotypes, always appreciate the creativity of teams. Creativity comes with exciting and interesting factors. So, make sure that your employees are enjoying what they are doing.

Don't Micromanage

It's ok to manage, observe, supervise and even control your employees. However, there should be a limit. You can control your employees up to a specific limit. Otherwise, it will affect your business negatively because employees can't be creative without flexibility.

How to Avoid Micromanaging?

You have to develop the courage to empower your employees. Extra freedom could also be dangerous, so keep a perfect balance between flexibility and control. Let the employees try new things and different methods. That's what great managers do to ensure higher productivity.

Confident

The primary quality of great managers is confidence. You have to be confident in your decisions and goals. Otherwise, your team will lose confidence and eventually become demotivated. Confident managers can also keep their teams motivated.

How to Become Confident?

Confidence comes with achievement. You achieve small milestones when you are ambitious about your goals and objectives. That's what keeps you motivated to achieve your ultimate goal. So, be motivated, ambitious, and consistent at your workplace.

Handle Pressure

Being a manager, you can experience a lot of pressure. Work pressure comes with work, deadlines, and a sense of responsibility. Every manager participates in these things in their career. However, the ones who know how to deal with things under pressure win the games.

How to Handle Pressure?

You have to make yourself emotionally stable. Don't let minor things control you. Also, try to keep yourself focused. Break big problems into next steps, ask for help when you need it, and look after your own rest. Managers who stay calm under pressure help their teams stay calm too.

Empathy

Empathy is something that makes your connection more substantial with your employees. When you listen to your employees' work difficulties, you can develop the best plan to achieve the goals.

How to show empathy?

Support your employees as much as possible. When you guide and treat them politely, you can build a strong work relationship with them. This work relation will help you obtain employees' efforts according to the work requirements.

Role Play

A manager could be a role model for employees. Employees learn from their seniors. So, please do whatever you want them to do. This approach can help you to develop your organizational culture according to your work requirements.

How to roleplay?

Suppose you want your employees to follow a particular rule or policy of the organization. Then, you have to follow it first. Similarly, introducing innovative work setups like automation or new working methods. You must operate smoothly in front of your team to bring them all on the same page.

Appreciate Others

Remember to appreciate your workforce. Employees need motivation that comes from appreciation. Hardworking employees also deserve appreciation.

Positive feedback always helps to grow. It also helps the other employees to learn and grow in healthy competition.

How to appreciate your employees?

Celebrate the small achievements of your teams. Also, analyze who played a vital role in the accomplishment of goals. Individual appreciation is also significant in motivating employees. It encourages employees to work hard.

Example: A Week of Good Management

A new manager of a five-person customer service team puts several of these qualities into practice:

Communication: On Monday she explains a new refund policy, then asks each person to explain it back in their own words to check it landed.
No micromanaging: She sets the goal (reply to every ticket within one business day) and lets the team decide how to split the queue.
Handling pressure: When a system outage on Wednesday floods the queue, she stays calm, posts an update for customers and reassigns work instead of jumping on every ticket herself.
Empathy: She notices one agent is quieter than usual and checks in privately; he's dealing with a family illness, so she adjusts his shifts.
Leading by example: She follows the same response-time goal on escalated tickets she handles.
Appreciation: On Friday she thanks two people by name for how they handled the outage.

Final Words

Managers have to keep sharpening their skills to perform at their best. Some people start with a natural talent for leading, but everyone can develop these qualities with practice. We have listed some must-have managerial skills that great managers own. It would help if you worked on them to become a great manager in your work life.

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