What is the role of a manager? To facilitate the success story of the company on a wider scale and to nurture individual employee career growth on a smaller scale. Those are some sizable boots to fill. You’ll also need to oversee employee role engagement in a way that meets health and safety standards, because a workplace that carries with it a high risk of injury is a workplace that will soon find there is a leakage of staff as quality team members are likely to move on in search of safer working practices.
If you have been individually affected by an injury at work, find an Atlanta PI attorney. But saying all of these things and nodding in agreement is all very simplistic. We all know what managers should do as part of their job. The answers seem obvious. Even someone who has only ever been placed in charge of a tin opener before will have a vague idea of what is expected of a manager placed in charge of 20 people. The question, therefore, is not what managers should be doing, but how they should be doing it.
- Listen and don’t assume
Managers are facilitators, both down the chain of command when it comes to ensuring work is completed to an acceptable level, and, importantly, up the chain of command where workers require assistance in problem solving. This is a key area of management that is often overlooked by managers who are only in their role to show support for decisions coming down the chain of command, but are not there to show support for communication going back the other way.
This issue of not facilitating any changes highlighted by employees can sometimes play out as listening to the issue but making assumptions over why the issue exists in the first place – namely that the employee is likely at fault. Listen to the issue, don’t make assumptions, and pass concerns up the chain of command as readily as you would pass commentary down the chain.
- The staff and the company are separate things
Following on from the point above about listening to staff, you must learn to recognise the personality of staff members as being separate to any company issues a particular staff member may report. In basic terms, you’re not going to see eye to eye with everyone you meet in life. That’s to be expected. But as a manager you must learn to see any company issues reported by members of staff as stand-alone entities, and don’t let your feelings towards the person reporting the issues cloud your judgement on how to proceed.
- Know your team
Poor management is associated with poor communication. The failure on behalf of a manager to know and understand the role of each team member can lead to tensions firstly where tasks are not delegated correctly, output is not satisfactory as a result, and blame is apportioned to undeserving individuals, or secondly where individuals are praised for actions (or are included in the praise) where the standout efforts of one individual go unnoticed.
