Good leaders are busy making their employees feel and perform better. Unfortunately, they often neglect to nurture their skills. However, men and women must hone their leadership and management skills, regardless of how busy they are.
But you must take charge of your own development. Here are some important employee management skills that you should develop.
Support
You need to support their professional growth to make them more valuable members of your team. Professional development opportunities reinforce employees’ confidence in their abilities. Moreover, these opportunities attract and keep the best employees.
When you invest in your employees’ professional growth, they’re more loyal to the company and consequently, less inclined to quit.
Most importantly, these measures engage employees. Bored employees have ineffective work habits. When you invest in them, you keep them interested and they won’t get bored.
Honesty
Your employees must trust you before they can respect you. For that reason, it pays be transparent with your staff. One way to show them that you’re honest is to give them straightforward feedback.
Furthermore, every time you deal with employee concerns, make sure you’re honest and clear. If your employee asks why they’re not getting a promotion, tell the truth and provide a legitimate reason for the decision. They might get angry, but they’ll respect you for being an honest leader.
Time Management
As a leader, you may neglect some of your responsibilities if you’re too busy. But if you’re a good leader, you know how to maximize your time so you can prioritize things that must be done on time.
Strong leaders are focused and organized, despite the many different tasks they handle. Learn to say no to responsibilities that will only hamper your most important goals.
As Warren Buffet said, avoid those low-priority tasks at all costs.
Emotional Intelligence
You should learn how to keep your emotions in check. Frantic emotions can destroy you as a leader.
If you want to improve your management skills, you should also develop your emotional intelligence (EI), which is your ability to manage and control how you express your emotions. This way, you can properly respond to other people’s emotions. Great leaders have high levels of EI.
Improving your EI requires that you identify your emotions and know what triggers them. When you have a clear picture of how you react to situations, you’ll have a better understanding of your emotions.
From there, you’ll learn how to manage your emotions, which is vital if you want to succeed as a leader. Keep in mind that great managers aren’t followers. They also don’t follow the group’s energy. Instead, they set the mood.
Delegate
As a leader, you don’t need to perform every task to get things done. If you do, you’ll fail because there isn’t enough time to do everything yourself. Learn how to relinquish control so you can free up your time to do more important things.
To be a great leader, you must learn to delegate and know how to step in if your team members aren’t delegating effectively. Delegating tasks to the right people will make you and your team more efficient.
Communication
Great leaders don’t just share information through the chain of command. Instead, they assess the relevance of that information to the company, how it affects the growth of the company, and how it affects the company’s people.
It’s also important to communicate business lessons to your employees. For example, you can share your mistakes to prevent your employees from being in similar situations.
Team Building
To encourage your employees to work harder toward a common goal, you need to keep them motivated. Team building doesn’t stop when you’ve hired the right people and developed a strong team. A team has to evolve.
As a good leader, you should retain strong employees who can deliver the best results for your company’s growth.
Take Responsibility
When you make a mistake, you have to own it. Don’t blame it on your employees. If you do so, you’ll only lose their trust and your credibility.
Your employees are more likely to support and respect you if you accept your own errors. After taking responsibility for your mistakes, address them proactively. In this way, you can be sure that they won’t happen again.
About the Author
Catrin Cooper is content manager for Rentberry, a home rental service and price negotiation platform.
