10 Essential Rules of Effective Management

Management is essentially an art of dealing with people and things in a way that they bring you desired outcomes. Simple it may sound but management is a concept which includes a number of skills and responsibilities and often seems too complex to be grasped and applied. Every manager has a unique style of management and you cannot really define a particular style as the right one. Management is a lot more than driving your employees to hard-work and efficiency. It’s also about keeping them motivated, providing them opportunities to grow professionally and aligning their work with the vision of the organization. As a manager, how you manage your team depends on your perspective and, of course, on the project and the employees but there are a few rules that you should keep in mind to ensure effective management.

1.       Set Goals for Your Team

It’s important to set achievable goals for your team and get your team members work together to reach those goals. Setting goals for individuals or just for the department can discourage teamwork, keeping the employees isolated and focused on individual objectives. As a manager you need to provide your teams a common goal for which they can collaborate, unite their focus and inspire each other.

2. Customize Your Approach

A team is composed of individuals having different perspectives, strengths, weaknesses, ideas and preferences. A manager needs to understand that there is never a one-size-fits-all approach for motivating employees or resolving all issues. Know your team members and figure out which approach works well for which employee.

3. Encourage Thought Sharing

Encourage your team members to share their thoughts and ideas. The more new and creative ideas you get, the more you can innovate and make improvements in the organization or project. Never criticize or discourage your team for voicing their opinion, even if it contradicts your own ideas. Also, discouraging opinions and ideas leads to resentment among employees.

4. Maintain Transparency

It’s important to remain transparent as a manager. It not only reflects your integrity but also earns you trust and respect. Lying about things or withholding information all the time could jeopardize you relationship with your employees. To manage your team and to exercise your authority effectively you need to win the trust of your team first by being transparent.

5. Set an Example

Before making your team members behave in a specific way, you need to set an example yourself. If you expect your team to be punctual, you cannot show up late every other day. If you want your team to maintain composure, even in critical times or times of conflict, you need to be emotionally stable regardless of the situation. As a manager you need to set the example of a perfect worker in order to motivate your team members to be so.

6. Appreciate Good Work

Appreciating and recognizing good work is a major factor in keeping employees motivated. There could be different ways of doing that like rewarding an employee with a bonus for his good work or giving him a vocal recognition through an announcement or a department-wide email. Rewarding hard-work makes the employee happy and inspires others to put in more efforts. However, it’s also important to appreciate the good work of all your employees equally so that you don’t get accused to picking favorites.

7. Maintain Consistency

A manager should be consistent in his approach. Reward same behaviors and discourage the same misconducts. It’s important that you treat every member of your team equally and make decisions in a level-headed manner, without being influenced by a particular employee or behavior. Maintain consistency in your approach and your team members will see you as a fair manager that makes the right decisions.

8. Instill Fun and Positivity in Work

Monotony creeps into the work silently and before you know it could exhaust even the most dedicated teams. As a manager, you need to instill fun in work so that people enjoy working for you. This can be done in simple ways like a surprise lunch outing, casual conversations with your employees or making breaks compulsory to get refreshed periodically. If people enjoy working with you, they would also put in their best efforts to achieve the goals you have set for them. Also, it’s important to ensure that the work environment is healthy and positive so that people feel comfortable at work and are motivated to perform better.

9. Maintain Clarity in Communication

Communication is a vital ingredient of effective teamwork. Maintain clarity in your instructions, meetings, and updates. Also, be accurate while conveying thoughts or information through any medium like emails, phone calls or in-person communication. Clarity and accuracy in communication will help you keep miscommunications and misunderstandings at bay so that the entire team can collaborate effectively.

10. Invite Feedback

Trends and situations keep changing and you need to rehash your management style from time to time to keep it effective. Inviting feedback from your team can be a great way of knowing what you are lacking. Ask employees what they like and do not like about your approach. Listen to them carefully to identify the issues and understand what amendments you can make to improve things. Your management style should be directed towards creating a mutually beneficial environment at work.

You can and should obviously tailor your approaches as a manager but keeping in mind these rules could make your approaches more effective. These rules focus on keeping the team happy and motivated to drive results. Being a successful manager means going that extra mile to achieve results and these golden rules will help you steer your wheel towards the same.