6 Daily Practices of Effective Managers

6 Steps for Leaders

It can be easy for employees to take managers for granted because most employees are trying to avoid the attention of their managers.

But a company cannot be successful without a dynamic and experienced team of managers.

Measuring Results

Each day, the management team of your company sets out to do everything it can to put employees in a position to succeed. In order to appreciate the pressure managers are under, we first need to understand and accurately measure the daily practices of the most effective managers.

6 Daily Practices of Effective Managers

1) Maintain Departmental Culture

In order for a sales department to be successful, the manager has to create a culture that fosters success. Sales enablement is the process of giving sales professionals the tools they need to succeed. A strong culture is maintained by a manager who gets involved in what the employees are doing and helps employees to solve daily problems.

A good manager is out there sustaining a culture of success and not locked in their office wondering what is going on.

2) Constantly Evaluating The Talent Of Team Members

If an employee has displayed a talent for doing something that is useful for the company, then a good manager would have taken note of that talent. Each and every day, good managers talk to their employees and monitor the work that is being done to determine the talent level of each employee.

When the company faces a crisis, a good manager knows which employees to call on to help solve the problem and move the company forward.

3) Constantly Looking For New Talent

A good manager has told the human resources department to line up interviews with any employee that could benefit the company. That is not to say that a good manager is always hiring new staff members.

But a good manager does want to know what talent is available should the need ever arise.

The company could decide to start a new department or a key employee could decide to leave the company. If that were to ever happen, an effective manager already has a pool of potential employment candidates to call on.

4) Meets With Employees

Each and every day, an effective manager sets up meetings with his employees to gauge the employee’s progress in their development and to identify any challenges that may have come up.

A good manager does not wait until the annual review to sit down and meet with employees.

While there should always be that open level of communication between employees and their manager, it is always a good idea for managers to schedule one-on-one meetings with all employees throughout the course of the day.

5) Head Off Conflict Before It Becomes Disruptive

There are few things that derail a successful company faster than internal conflict. A little friendly competition for jobs and promotions is a healthy thing for any company. But when a real conflict erupts, that can disrupt the entire company.

A good manager is constantly keeping an eye out for potential conflict and working to eliminate the issue before it explodes into a problem. An effective manager does not avoid conflict in the hopes that it will just go away.

An effective manager addresses conflict head-on and eliminates it immediately.

6) Remain Honest With Employees

Employees know when they are being lied to, and they do not like it. While the truth can sometimes hurt, it is still in the manager’s best interest to be honest with employees at all times.

Employees will have to understand that there are times when the manager cannot be forthright with delicate or sensitive information.

But when the information needs to be distributed, employees want to know that their managers are being honest with them each and every time.

Effective managers are interactive leaders who understand and remember what it is like to be an employee. But managers also have to keep one eye on the future growth of the company, and that is what makes a manager’s job difficult.

So how are you doing with the above six daily practices? Are there areas of improvement that you can start today or tomorrow? What sort of challenges do you face in becoming a better manager or leader? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: ep.yimg.com

L2L Contributing Author

3 Comments

  1. George Bond on October 8, 2014 at 7:58 pm

    Could I get your permission to use this as a Deck Plate Leadership presentation where I make a PPT and lesson plan noting you as the author?
    Thank you



  2. Jim on October 8, 2014 at 8:42 pm

    Some interesting thoughts. I have a couple of comments to share from a different perspective (I’m an engineer, not in sales, so I’m sure our context is quite different). I like your comment of ensuring your employees have all the tools they need to be successful at their job – but I would also add that a good manager needs to make sure that all their employees also know what they need to do to be successful (it’s not enough to say “look at all the software/hardware you have, go to it” – there has to be clearly understood and defined goals). And, those goals need to be within the control of the employee. It’s easy to say “I want you to have that fixed today”, but in the world of complicated engineering tasks, sometimes it’s not easy to say how long it will take to fix something, so defining success as something dependent on factors outside the control of the employee will not enabling them to be at their best. Also, along those lines, its important for a manger to ensure that the environment is supportive of the goal (again, using the “fix this” example – its not productive to allow that engineer to be tapped by multiple other manager to solve their problems too – they need focus).

    Also, you comment that managers should meet with their employees every day – this would be overkill for both an engineering manager and their employees. Too many meetings interrupt focus and slow down progress of complicated knowledge tasks. I think managers should meet regularly with their employees, and often in more unofficial ways, but there needs to be a balance (and that will be dependent on the needs of both the manager and the employee). Again, I’m not coming from a sales environment, so this might be perfectly appropriate in your context, but scheduling meetings every day with their employees is not something that every manager should do in all situations.

    One last thing that I think every good manager should do – is support the development of their employees. Your discussion of talent suggests that people have specific talents, and they just need to be recognized. But, there are talents waiting to be developed in every employee that could be incredibly powerful, if the employee was given the space to be challenged and grow. A good manager needs to balance the personal goals of the employee, while giving them stretch goals to help them move beyond falling into a comfortable role. What starts as a comfortable but competent job can quickly become something that causes an employee to be disengaged when there is no more challenge or opportunity for meaningful growth. And, vice-versa, simply pushing an employee towards an opportunity that they have no interest in (even if they have the competence) is going to drive them to find a new job.



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