How to Manage People

You may have just earned a promotion and finally broke from the ranks of the worker bees to the first levels of management and a nice paycheck to reflect your promotion. However, there seems to be an issue: You've never managed a person, let alone a group of people, in your life! Who knew that promotions and pay raises came with such responsibility? Believe it or not, there are ways to manage people effectively. There are theories upon theories, and books upon books, on what it takes to be a leader. Yet it really comes down to one simple thing: Communication. This article will show you how to manage people effectively through communication.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Meet and greet with every person under your supervision. If you are starting out as a manager, you probably have a small group of people to manage. Take the time to get to know them. By investing the time it takes to put a name with a face, your people will have a sense of motivation just because you made them feel less like numbers and more like people to you. Find out the basics: Their lifestyle, their goals, where they plan to go with the company. By knowing what motivates them a little, you can tap into a gold mine.

2. Ditch the sound bites and get "real". By saying things like "I want the best for you" and "As a team we can achieve more", you are repeating the same old same old that they have heard from every new manager that makes her first speech at the group meeting. You don't have to come up with something catchy and new, but be real. Tell them what you really think about the state of the company. Talk about specific things you've seen, both good and bad. By relating to the current situation it shows you know where you are working from on a personal level and not a "numbers" level.

3. Watch with your own eyes for problems, solutions and positive qualities. Take the time to "walk the floor" and see what's really going on. Listen in on how your workers communicate with each other. See why the quiet ones are quiet and the bossy ones are bossy. Knowing how your workers communicate will help you communicate better with them.

4. Delegate with good intentions. You can't solve all the company problems alone. Constantly barking orders and taking control and making every decision means that you now have to spend more time deciding on what brand of toilet paper goes in the you'll never leave the office. Pushing off every job to everyone else can leave you completely out of the loop when things fall apart. Delegate authority on decision making to people whom you feel can replace you when you move up in the ranks. Play to the strengths and encourage them. The bottom line is probably the "bottom line" to your bosses and not how you got there.

5. Mediate conflicts without trying to solve them every time. There will be clashes. There will be differences of opinion. It may be quiet conflict, or it may be a screaming match. Regardless, you should mediate them to find out what the underlying problems are. That doesn' t mean you have to be ready with the instant answer or the blanket punishment. Listen to both sides, assess the situation and facilitate the communication so that at least both conflicting parties have some sort of buy in to the solution.

6. Accept the blame, pass on the success. If something goes wrong and your own supervisors call you on it in front of your workers, take the blame. Take it all. Don't name names, even if everyone knows who made the mistake. Ultimately you are responsible for what goes on good or bad with the company. Just talk to the responsible parties in private. They saw you take the heat for them which says a lot. When things go well, give them credit. You can even be specific in referencing their achievements.

7. Trust but verify. Your people often have good intentions but sometimes you get one or two who want to take advantage of the system or the "new guy". Trust their words, but verify them. Ask questions that you already have the answers to in order to measure their integrity. It isn't a matter of "trapping" them in a lie, it is a matter of figuring out for yourself whom you can fully trust when you aren't around.

Tips & Warnings

• There is no one magic approach for all groups of people in leadership and management. But understanding the fundamentals of each major style and how your people communicate can help you decide how your which leadership approach will be most effective.