It’s often said that people quit their bosses, not their jobs — such is the role that leaders play within an organization. For the most part, leaders and managers are promoted based on their skills and abilities, but many employers fail to consider soft skills like interpersonal communication, motivational abilities, decision making and rapport building, among many others.
If you want to be an effective leader while ensuring your employees respect you, below are five ways to do just that.
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Set Clear and Realistic Goals
Great bosses will sit down with their team on day one and talk about their expectations and goals. They lay out their performance metrics and define what they consider great work. These discussions also happen all throughout the course of their leadership, either in formal meetings or through informal conversations.
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Don’t Micromanage
Effective bosses set expectations, but they don’t dictate how they want their employees to get work done. Once you’ve discussed your desired outcomes and set goals on how to get there, employees should have the right to work these details out on their own, in the manner they see fit.
This management style shows you trust your employees and ensures you’re free to work on your other responsibilities.
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Great Leaders are Great Coaches
While great bosses don’t micromanage their employees, they do provide guidance or coaching on how to get things done. Great managers are great coaches. They are willing to educate and motivate employees and set a positive example for them to follow.
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They Don’t Make Assumptions
Effective bosses never assume their employees already know what to do and how to execute it. It all goes back to setting expectations and providing guidance. Like a coach, you need to call plays on the sidelines every now and then just to ensure your employees are doing well. But you can’t run the entire play either because your team won’t learn anything.
The key is striking a balance between having too much or too little control.
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Great Bosses Regularly Provide Feedback
Many bosses often wait until the biannual or annual performance report to give feedback to employees. But this often causes many employees to feel they should’ve been told about their performance sooner so they could act right then and there.
Offering feedback on the fly allows you to build better relationships with your team members. It’s more conversational, similar to the relationship between player and coach, and avoids the problem of employees resenting their bosses any time they offer feedback.
Learn more workforce management guidelines and pointers from the Wichita, KS, staffing professionals of Top Notch Personnel. Contact us today to learn more about our aircraft, construction and manufacturing recruitment services!
