Characteristics of an Effective Manager

Characteristics of an Effective Manager!

 Maintaining discipline, meeting goals, increment, managing your work stack these are the basic expectations from a leader. But what are those extra actions; something more superficial, more off the book, more unconventional that directly impacts a team’s performance and earns him those extra brownie points.

Like a cricket team can have 11 players but the face of the Team is always the “skipper” aka the “Captain”. Good or bad, failures or victories it’s him/her who have to face the consequences, now it can be roses or stones, praises or abuses. Similarly a “Manager” is not only responsible for his/her “own” actions but also responsible for whole of the team. Maintaining discipline, meeting goals, increment, managing your work stack these are the basic expectations from a leader. But what are those extra actions; something more superficial, more off the book, more unconventional that directly impacts a team’s performance and earns him those extra brownie points. Here are 5 unconventional ways how a manager is shaping a team’s performance:

Behavior/ Attitude: When you are an individual then you are care free in terms of your behavior and attitude toward others. If you don’t like someone you won’t talk to him, if they don’t like you they won’t talk to you. But the equation changes drastically when the person at one end is a leader or a manager, as now the balance becomes a bit inclined towards him. Now, ethically he should be the one to break the ice, doesn’t matter if he is sharing an end of that balance or not; until one end is share by his “own” he is responsible.

Aura: When you or your friend walks into the office no one cares (okay a few of your admirers or your team mates may be) about how’s your mood, how’s your temper, how you are walking; but when a manager or a team lead walks in every single of his team member notices if he is happy or sad, quirky or cheerful, if he is walking head down or straight because that’s going to determine the course on the action of their plead to him. We all have face the same situation, whenever we need some leaves or want to discuss something with our manager we normally ask our team mates, “How’s the temper?” and based upon that we take our list of requests forward.

The "Learning" to "Earning" ratio : Broadly classified we all work for 2 things “Earning” and “Learning” , in most of the cases former is the primary driving force for living but the later one is also very important for personal development.  When we enter to any new role the earning to learning ratio is 50:50 and gradually it shifts over the time and eventually it lands to 90:10 or even 95:5. While there is no harm to stay in that ratio but one certainly loses the interest in their work and that results to redundancy. That’s where again your “Guardian Angel” aka your manager comes into picture, as it’s his duty to oversee his team member’s work graph and time to time analyze ,ask if he or she is fine with the quality of work they are doing and change if needed!

Its not “WHAT”, its “HOW” :  Since childhood I had this very bad attitude issue that you can get any work done from me if asked nicely otherwise you’ll find yourself talking to a wall. Somewhere after a period of time every single working individual is like that child when asked for work by his or her boss. If asked nicely consider it’s done but if you’ll act like a boss and give me that “You have to do as I said so” attitude then we all know what’s coming from opposite end (don’t get your hopes high majority of cases its “Yes Sir/ OK Sir”). Even if he’ll be successful for that particular instance I can promise you worse is coming!

Sensitivity : We all feel bad when you text your boss saying “Off sick can’t come today”, “Family Urgency”, “any personal issues” and your boss in turn calls you back only asking about if your work is impacted or not (even if you’ve faked it..still). You feel like an object , just being used and getting paid in return , hence you behave accordingly from then onward. A small “take care or tc” message would in turn change the situation very positively. While this is just one of the many scenarios where a little effort can change the way of perceiving things.

So, even if you’re cold hearted person in general and don’t gives a sh*t about anyone but still you need to be a little empathetic towards your team mates as they are going to be your work horses driving your chariot of promises and words.

Link to my other articles:

Why Mails are such key component in professional world!
Want to give up? May be..
Monday Blues!
Type of background buzz at work
The Mini Boss Syndrome
The Power of Influence
They say..
What does a Woman actually needs from society!
A conversation with yourself
Things we left with college
Tips to manage rain to maintain office
PG Accommodation, the highs and lows
Do we loose good resource in a good leader