Your team is counting on you to get the best out of them.
A people manager’s life isn’t always easy, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have room for improvement. It may not be easy in this fast-paced environment with so many responsibilities and deadlines constantly coming at once.
However, I’m here today because there IS still hope: You!
Realising You’re a Bad Boss: How Can You Improve?
You keep providing Negative Feedback.
You spend most of your time talking with employees about what they can improve. You point out mistakes and offer guidance on how to fix them or behaviours that need changing so it won’t happen again for them to learn from their errors and feel like you care enough as an employer/ manager. If this sounds somewhat like your character, you might need to change your leadership and management.
How to Improve?: To provide a sense of encouragement and support for employees, Feedback must be both constructive and reinforcing. The person giving the criticism or advice should always include why they like what’s going well and an area where improvement could make a difference in performance levels without harming morale too much.
Your Employees’ Career Least Matters To You
Being the leader, you are not valuing your employees’ work. You don’t ask them what makes them happy or what job would they like to pursue or get promoted to. You also don’t know what they are facing in their personal lives: whether they are mentally fine or having issues. Overall, you don’t think much about caring to connect your employees with other company networks that they might be more interested in knowing about.
How to improve?: In today’s competitive job market, you must protect the success of your employees. If they are successful in their careers and have opportunities for growth within or outside of our company, then there will be less pressure to quit when another better option comes along.
You don’t allow employees to give you Feedback
You have a major flaw in your employee review process that leaves room for improvement. You don’t ask anyone who works with you to tell you how they think you could improve, leaving yourself open and vulnerable when it comes down to key decisions on bonuses or promotions. Focusing solely on organisational performance reviews can leave some serious blind spots about what might make someone great at their job – but not always getting seen by those around them.
How to Improve?: Many of your employees might be feeling anxious about giving you Feedback. Don’t give up on them. Take your time to ask questions and observe what communication styles they prefer, then offer different avenues for getting their thoughts out healthy so that all parties can improve together.
Having Little Or No Vision
You don’t tell your team about the insights you learn from meetings with other leaders and executives at the company. Your employees have no idea what goals are planned for this year, nor do they know if their performance is being reviewed positively or negatively by the higher-ups in management. When asking around why things happen as frequently every day, nobody readily has an answer because these discussions never happen between departments within one workplace, leaving everyone wondering how each others’ jobs function internally without any knowledge of one another’s responsibilities.
How to Improve?: This is a great way to set team goals and create guardrails for your employees. Create an atmosphere where people might feel comfortable sharing their innovative business ideas, especially if they are creative types who might not always fit in well with other teams or organisations. You can have feedback sessions about how things could be improved so that everyone’s on the same page when it comes time for annual reviews later down this road.
Inflexibility still Prevails
Inflexible bosses create more work for their teams. They also prevent employees from taking care of themselves by making them go through hoops and restrict certain types of time off, like blackout dates or doctor’s appointments. Inflexibility is not a good trait in any situation because it limits options for people who need flexibility the most – your staff members.
How to Improve?: Flexibility is one of the most highly sought-after benefits by employees, and if your company isn’t accommodating that fact, it will start to lose talent. While you may not be able to modify HR policies regarding flexible work arrangements, you can create a shared set of guidelines with other teams within the business. Hence, they’re aware of what’s expected from them when situations arise without having any boundaries or limits placed on their ability.
The Conclusion
It’s absolutely normal for humans to make mistakes, but you needn’t be afraid of admitting your errors as a leader. In fact, the best ones are always transparent with their team and seek out self-improvement opportunities to continue leading from stronger positions in the future. It’s not just about respecting your employees but also treating them well. This goes a long way, ensuring their happiness and success as an employee of yours, which leads to many other positive outcomes for you (as manager) and overall company successes.
Expert Mind Solutions is a professional company consulting firm that has worked with a diverse group of professional clients from startups, enterprises, corporations, etc.
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