Managing Employees Is Easier With These 5 Guidelines

Improve your management processes and become a better manager

 

Managing employees isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
 
People are complex, and everyone's a little different. We aren’t all motivated by the same things.
 
It’s important to get to know each of your team members so you can better understand their strengths and weaknesses.
 

But this is rarely, if ever, an overnight process. In a situation where you have many new hires, it’s unlikely you’ve had enough time to learn about your team.
 
Are you feeling overwhelmed yet?
 
Not to worry – you can bring some simplicity to your management efforts by following these basic rules and guidelines and become a better manager in the process.

1. Don’t Worry About Being Liked – Worry About Being Respected

Try as you might, you can’t please everyone as a manager.
 
You may be in a management position because of your empathy for others and deep understanding of human nature.
 
But if you always make decisions to try to keep everyone happy, no one will be happy. There’s no silver bullet when it comes to keeping everyone happy. Some will like you and the decisions you make, and others will dislike you and the decisions you make. There’s no way to avoid this.
 
It’s much better to aspire to be respected as a manager than to be liked as a manager. Being known as someone who’s fair and makes decisions in alignment with the company’s values is better than being known as a manager that compromises the future of the company to try to win everyone over.

2. Delegate Responsibilities & Oversee Your Employees

This is a two-step process.
 
First, you must delegate responsibilities. There’s a good chance you’re going to feel overwhelmed as a manager if you don’t leverage the personnel resources available to you.
But this doesn’t mean you get to “set it and forget it”.
 
You must ensure you’ve assigned the tasks to the right people. You must ensure they’re completing the work to your standards.
 
You can’t steer a parked car, but you can adjust once you get going. First, assign tasks to your team members. Then, if necessary, reassign tasks or correct workloads.

Bonus Tip: Learn how you can share some of the responsibility of scheduling with your employees by using The Relational Employee Schedule Formula.

3. Communicate Clearly & Be Transparent

Why is it that so many managers have high standards and expectations for their employees and yet never share their vision with their employees?
 
Your team members cannot hit invisible targets, try as they might. They need to know where to aim. They need clearly defined targets and goals.
 
Additionally, you may have high hopes for your team, but you still need to be realistic with how much can be accomplished and to what extent.Dealing with problems in the workplace is a common challenge managers face. If you can work through the discomfort and communicate the issues at hand, you’ll earn the trust of your employees and be respected for addressing problems as they arise.

4. Give Away The Credit, Take On The Blame

A good manager does not rush to place blame or reprimand an employee just because a target wasn’t hit.
 
You can instantly lose a lot of credibility with your team if this is how you deal with every missed goal.
 
Certainly, if you have workers who consistently aren’t performing at their best and continually cause trouble, you may want to consider firing them.
 
However, in an instance where you know you are working with sharp people who just aren’t delivering the expected results, you shouldn’t do anything rash.Your team wants to know you’ve got their back.
 
Likewise, if your team is going above and beyond the call of duty, don’t take all the credit for it. Share it with your team and engage them. This will build more trust with your team and will reinforce the kind of behavior you want to encourage in the company.

5. Hire The Right People

This might seem like common sense, but common sense isn’t that common.
 
Hiring the right people can make a significant difference when it comes to management.

If you hire sharp people who are good at what they do, you won’t have to repeat yourself and answer the same questions all the time. You won’t have to retrain workers who don’t know what they’re doing. You won’t have to stress over the details because you’re working with people you trust.
 
If you hire anyone and everyone, eventually you’re going to run into some issues. Difficult people are difficult to work with, and there are no hacks or easy fixes for that.

If there’s any “hack” here, it’s to find the right employees and hire the right people to begin with.

Final Thoughts

Learn to keep it simple.
 
People are complex enough, and if you add to the complex by creating rules that are hard to follow, you’re going to make management harder than it needs to be.
 
Use the above five guidelines as a starting point to improve your management processes.