Skills For Managers

Skills For Managers To Be More Successful

Deciding on the most critical skills for managers is an essential task for any business. Managers make sure that the business operates as it should and that everything gets processed efficiently and effectively. Without the right skills for managers in place, organizations flounder and may not even survive. Some of the most important skills for managers are analyzed below.

Skills for Managers Include Setting Clear Expectations

One of the most critical skills for managers is the ability to set clear expectations for employees. We talk about this skill quite a bit because this skill extends to every area of the job. Employees need clear expectations not just for the tasks that they carry out every day, and the objectives that they are set, but also in terms of behavior. One of the best ways of setting clear expectations for work tasks that need to be completed is using SMART objectives. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and with a Time Frame. This makes it very clear for employees to understand the expectations of them. For example, an objective that states something like: “Produce a large report on our clients,” is very lacking in specifics. A better objective that would set clearer expectations is SMART and would be detailed out like this:

“Produce a 20 page report on our client success rates by Friday at 5pm, including all clients from 2007 to 2012”.

With a time frame and a specified number of pages and subject matter the employee is better able to understand the expectation at the outset. Being clear in this way helps employees to understand exactly what the expectation is of them. If this task is unrealistic they can then challenge it at the time that it is designated to them.

But it is not just in setting goals that employees need clear expectations. It is also with regard to many other aspects of the job. For example, you may not want team members turning up to the office late, wearing jeans, chewing gum and swearing. Of course, most employers would not want this. You cannot just assume that your employees will behave in the way that you wish them to. In this particular instance you would need to specify starting time—and be clear about what happens if an employee is late—as well as specifying dress code, that chewing gum is unacceptable and that swearing is inappropriate. Along a similar vein, skills for managers to adopt include helping employees to understand processes. Looking at the example of annual leave, most work places would not want employees to book this the day before the leave is due to start. They like to get a bit of notice. The expectation should be set that a specified period of time in advance is required if annual leave is to be booked – perhaps a week or a month. It is also necessary to set clear expectations regarding how many people can be out of the office at any given time, so that employees are not disappointed later.

Driving Employee Engagement Skills For Managers

Employee engagement can deliver increased productivity, profitability and improved customer retention. It can also lead to changes that might be unexpected such as a better safety record. In fact, Gallup research performed in 2006 found that those companies with the best employee engagement were also:

• 12% better at customer engagement
• 18% more productive
• 12% more profitable

They also had considerably lower levels of accidents and shrinkage. Worryingly, Gallupalso found that the lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the US economy $370 billion annually. This is why in developing a list of skills for managers, the ability to engage employees needs to be near the top.

Motivating staff is not the same as engaging staff, though motivating staff forms a part of engaging staff. One of the most important skills for managers lies in being able to determine what motivates different people. Motivation really impacts the bottom line. Research by Buckingham and Coffman (1999) found that in a US retail chain, the difference between the top and bottom 25% of stores in terms of motivated staff equated to $104 million in sales. People are motivated by different things and research has found that this may include money, but also respect, recognition and many other factors.

Assessing Skills For Managers

Assessing skills for managers is helpful in developing staff effectively and spending the limited employee training and development budget in the most appropriate ways possible. One of the key skills for managers is also being able to analyze and review the development needed for their team members. Understanding the specific development areas of each individual is tied to performance management and setting clear expectations at the outset. If employees understand clearly what they are supposed to be doing then they can deliver to their objectives. If they cannot achieve this then it may be clear that employee development is required, in which case the manager can assess what the problem is and determine a course of action that will correct the problem.

Overall, when determining the critical skills for managers you need to be mindful of the state of your business at the current time. If you have an engagement issue, you may want to develop managers to be able to drive engagement effectively. Alternatively, if the ability to set clear expectations is a challenge then you might want to focus on these skills for managers. Deciding on the key skills for managers that you need to develop and improve at any given time is critical to business success.

Reports Cited

• Employee Engagement: What’s Your Engagement Ratio? Gallup 2008-2010.
• First Break All the Rules – Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, 1999.