Treat everyone with respect, be a good listener, learn a consistent way to deal with employee performance issues and be available and visible for your team. These are basic tips for new managers. What other advice can the management.about.com website give us?
1. Treat all your subordinates with respect. Never break this rule and never lose your temper.
2. Ask what your employees think about a specific problem. According to management guru Tom Peters, by asking you show them that you respect them and you also encourage them to use their own means and judgment to solve problems they are confronted with.
3. Get familiar with your new team – you and your peers are your superior’s team. Don’t only manage up and down, also manage sideways.
4. While your previous boss may have swept issues under the rug regularly, as a new manager you may not wish to do everything as he did. Under circumstances like these, you have to learn a consistent way of dealing with any performance issues of your subordinates might have. Develop an effective and transparent process.
5. Don’t try to be friend with your employees. It is a common mistake new managers make. Especially when your employees were previously your teammates and friends, now the situation is different and the relationships have changed. You are the authority now and you can’t risk being accused of biases based on friendship. Be friendly, but it is better to keep these work relationships fully professional.
6. Practice active listening. This is the most essential skill of leaders and managers.
7. Details are not always important anymore because as a manager your duty is not to do your old job, and neither is it to do the job of your employees. Don’t worry too much about how it is done – fully focus now on what to do.
8. Study Situational Leadership. Buy a book or take a course as an introduction to this approach. Ask more experienced colleagues about it. It helps you to decide how to manage each of your employees, and how to find out how much direction they need.
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