Six Priorities of an Effective Manager

What is most important in efficient team management? What attitudes distinguish true leaders? Here is a list of priorities shared by all successful managers. Read on.

Being goal oriented

No matter the position you occupy, you are usually responsible for achieving goals. If you lead a team, you also care for maintaining the highest possible quality and efficiency of work. So it is of key importance not to lose sight of the goal and define it precisely, set deadlines and measure progress of task realization. It makes you see almost every professional activity through the lens of the planned result. A potential pitfall of this attitude is ignoring changes around you and overestimating resources available. Remember that goals – much like everything else – change, so it is a good idea to update every strategy from time to time. 

Having clear rules of cooperation

We all want to an orderly and predictable environment, as far as possible. Stable rules are key here. What comes time and again in the professional practices of the current global top leaders is a habit of starting the cooperation with clear formulation and communication of rules to govern the way your team and organization working together. If it is your managerial debut, you need to know that it is one of the most important and urgent tasks in team management. These rules have to be written, communicated to everyone, and what’s most difficult – consistently applied. 

You may also be interested in: Five Rules for Motivating Employees According to Ken Blanchard.

Direct communication

Detailed goal descriptions and precise rules are all but for naught without effective communication. New solutions facilitating task management and information flow within an organization are created daily, but none can ever replace a conversation and a direct contact between an employee and a manager. At the seat of Cox Enterprises, one of the largest corporate groups in the US, in the board of directors meeting room, there is an inscription: “Always be ready to talk to your people.” The company founders in the early twentieth century ordered it and its message is still quoted at the beginning of most of the managerial trainings within the organization. The company’s dynamic growth since 1898 seems to confirm the importance of this priority. 

Clear role separation 

Clearly set duties are a necessary condition for effective management of any team. That’s why every manager has to master the skill to formulate a clear task description, as well as assign it to the right persons and to ensure 

 effective communication between employees. Each of them needs to know them and be able to realize them in cooperation with other teammates, which should be obvious, but alas, not always is. 

Read also: How to Take Care of Your Team?

Continuous improvement 

A true leader knows that they always need to keep up with the changes. They take care that the processes are more and more efficient, and improvement and change implementation can be done smoothly. To achieve this you’ll need tools not only to facilitate the data and information exchange management, but also to increase the level of employee competency, according to the company’s current needs. Properly selected and conducted trainings provide several benefits at the same time. First and foremost, they facilitate the processes under implementation: for a well-trained employee, the need of certain changes becomes natural and obvious. Trainings are also an significant motivational factor for teams, and can attract talent to your organization, too.

Consistent enforcement of task realization

An efficient manager supports their employees in task realization, but they also watch if the tasks are properly interpreted and realized on time. If you have information about required resources, you can regularly monitor progress, provide feedback and assess the work done so far. If potential delays repeat on a regular basis, you should investigate the causes for delays and try to eliminate them through system changes. It means that you mustn’t focus on individual cases, but you need to identify the mechanisms that cause issues and create solutions to circumnavigate them. 

To sum up: and effective manager delegates and manages tasks, while still keeping an eye on the broader picture. This last part is particularly important, as many leaders tend to occasionally fall into the trap of micromanagement, trying to solve immediate issues that other people should be dealing with. The job of a manager is to manage work, asses the results and ensure the resources required are available, without going down to much detail and losing sight of strategic objectives.

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