What Makes a Good Manager? Here Are 10 Tips

There isn't a magic formula for good management, of course, but if you're a manager perhaps these tips will help you be more effective.

1. Choose a field thoughtfully. Make it one you enjoy. It's hard to be productive without genuine enthusiasm. This is true whether you're a manager or employee.

2. Hire carefully and be willing to fire. You need a strong team, because a mediocre team gives mediocre results, no matter how well managed it is.

3. Create a productive environment. This is a particular challenge because it requires different approaches depending on the context.

Sometimes you maximize productivity by giving everybody his or her own office. Sometimes you achieve it by moving everybody into open space. Sometimes you use financial incentives to stimulate productivity. A combination of approaches is usually required.

One element that almost always increases productivity is providing an information system that empowers employees.

When I was building Microsoft, I set out to create an environment where software developers could thrive. I wanted a company where engineers liked to work. I wanted to create a culture that encouraged them to work together, share ideas and remain highly motivated. If I hadn't been a software engineer myself, there's no way I could have achieved my goal.

4. Define success. Make it clear to your employees what constitutes success and how they should measure, their achievements.

Goals must be realistic. Project schedules, for example, must be set by the people who do the work. Unachievable goals undermine an organization.

At my company, in addition to regular team meetings and one-on-one sessions between managers and employees, we use mass gatherings periodically and e-mail routinely to communicate what we expect from employees.

5. To be good manager, you have to like people and be good at communicating. This is hard to fake. If you don't genuinely enjoy interacting with people, it'll be hard to manage them well.

You must have a wide range of personal contacts within your organization. You need relationships - not necessarily personal friendships - with a fair number of people, including your own employees. You must encourage these people to tell you what's people are thinking about the company and your role in it.

6. Develop your people to do their jobs better than you can. Transfer your skills to them.

Many smart managers like to see their employees increase their responsibilities because it frees the managers to tackle new or undone tasks.

7. Build morale.

Give people a sense of the importance of what they're working on - its importance to the company, its importance to customers.

When you achieve great results, everybody involved should share in the credit and feel good about it.

8. Take on projects yourself. You need to do more than communicate.

9. Don't make the same decision twice. Spend the time and thought to make a solid decision the first time

People hate indecisive leadership so you have to make choices.

However that doesn't mean you have to decide everything the moment it comes to your attention. Nor that you can't ever reconsider a decision.

10. Let people know whom to please. Maybe it's you, maybe it's your boss and maybe it's somebody who works for you. You're in trouble - and risking paralysis in your organization - when employees start saying to themselves: "Am I supposed to be making this person happy or this other person happy? They seem to have different priorities."

Exercise 9. Answer the following questions.

1. What do you know about Bill Gates?

2. Is it important to be enthusiastic about your business?

3. What kind of team do you need?

4. How can you increase productivity?

5. What kind of goals must be set?

6. Must a manager be good at communicating?

7. How can you develop your people to do their jobs better?

8. What does company morale imply?

9. Is it important for a manager to take on a task himself?

10. Why is it necessary not to take the same decision twice?

11. Whom do employees must please?

12. Can Bill Gates' tips really help executives to manage well?

Дата добавления: 2015-04-29