Posts Tagged ‘nurture your communication skills’
Communication: Key to Effective Leadership and Performance
Whether this new managerial position simply landed on your lap or you impressed the right people with your skills and experience, planning about your success early can do your career a lot of good. It might not show, but managing people is one of the hardest part of being a manager. And the efforts that you make when you start in your new role will se the mood for months and years to come.
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Aside from the substantive work that you do, the way you handle your team must be a priority. It is important that you first recognize the fact the regardless of the kind of management a strategy you apply, your goal is for you and your team members to learn from each other while in the team. And since you are the manager, it will be your responsibility to establish that give and take relationship.
If you and your team are not looking at the same goal at the end of the day, then there is a huge need to reassess your priorities. With tough luck, you will have employees who are smarter than you and who know their jobs better than you do. However, do not take this negatively, instead think of it as a blessing. When you come to think of it, the success of a manager will be deduced from the quality of work done by the team.
Usually, a supervisor fails to realize how important being educated by their employees is. Usually, what they do is give more importance to authority and control over realizing what they can get from a mutual and a continual learning process. By sharing the learning experience, it will be much easier to nurture the relationship build on respect. Work relationships built on respect lead to great performance.
That is why, your strategy should focus on the quality of your communications as well as your accessibility as a manager.
One way is to use and teach effective communications. How good you are as a leader depends on how effective your communication is with your team. The phrase “proper communication” might sound easy, but in reality it is not. It is more than just the spoken word; it is about expressing and accurate message through tone and body language and to understand the real message that you are getting in return as well. Maintaining the communication lines always open, having the knack to adapt your style with the different types of audiences, and making sure that everyone is one the same page is necessary. If you nurture your communication skills as a manager, everyone will enjoy the consequences.
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Giving Orders Is Not The Best Way
It may be my red hair (and the temper that goes with it) or just plain human nature, but I have a real problem with people giving me direct orders! Last time I checked, I had not joined the armed forces (though I did consider it in my youth). However, if they are my superior (in a working relationship) I know they have the right to give orders, but that does not make it the right way.
There is a nicer, better way to accomplish the same thing, while maintaining a good working relationship. This approach involves making suggestions or asking questions, instead of commanding. Something like: “You might want to consider trying …” or “Do you think this would work?” Either of these options would be preferable.
Your approach will determine how well any criticism is received and acted upon. An approach that allows someone to save face, and perhaps learn something new in the process would surely be a better way to go. So when it is time to critique someone, try the questioning / suggestion approach and see what happens.
The first question to ask yourself is whether this person has received proper training and direction on the project at hand. If not, that is where to begin. If they have been properly trained, let them do the work and see how well they do. Then if things are still not on par with your expectations try the question / suggestion approach.
This approach gives people the opportunity to show you what they can do and how they would do it. Let them use their own creativity. You might be surprised to see that they have a better or different way than you would have used that is quite acceptable, maybe even preferable. This can work very well for your Direct Sales Marketing, and you might just learn something that you can use for your marketing business!