Written By: Jez Perez
October 1, 2019 | 10:10am
I was not always a great manager. But it is a SKILL TO BE LEARNED that’s for 100% sure.
Here are the simple keys that will make you
a better manager.
1) Give the goal. That's simple. What is the goal? To clearly communicate the goal of a project, imagine if you snapped your fingers and the project was done, what is the result? What does "done" look like? You absolutely HAVE to give the end goal to someone before they start on a project. And you have to be able to describe it clearly. You have to communicate your vision of success to whomever is going to do the work. If you can do this well, you're more than halfway to becoming a great manager.
2) Define the “NO”s. What can’t they do? It shouldn’t look like this, it shouldn’t look like that. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. This is not as important as (1). But it can be crucial, especially if your business has certain liabilities and can't screw certain things up.
3) Set a due date or check-in date to follow up. I don’t care who they are, people get motivated by deadlines. If you don’t set a deadline of when it is due and at least pretend to give a dan that it be done by that deadline, it won't get done. But never be mean or disrespectful to your employees. Be professional, and simply tell them when the work is due! The check in is always great as well for bigger projects as it will keep you from bugging them constantly and will help break the project up into manageable chunks.
4) Ask questions to make sure you're on the same page. When you're managing an employee, the responsibility to make sure they are on track and on target falls mostly on you, the manager. If you don’t ask good questions, they will come back and say “I wasn’t clear on X. I didn’t know if you wanted Y or Z…any time they spend unclear of what you want them to do is a waste will delay your project.
If you do all of the above, then that’s it. LEAVE THEM ALONE! You know what micromanaging is? Or how micromanaging starts? It’s when you try and tell someone HOW to do their job. That will mess you up. That will make them pissed and disengaged. That will cause tension and cause them to resent you and then they'll quit YOU will have to do it. And you certainly cannot ask them how it’s going all the time. You will see them in the next check-in meeting and see what they have.
If you do this right, however, you empower your employee to be creative about accomplishing your goals. They may think of an improvement to a process that you've never considered, and those little improvements, believe me, add up to save you thousands upon thousands of dollars every year.
You can't build something great by yourself. So you need to get good at helping other people see what you see, experience your vision.
This is how you will be successful in managing any employee. And it's especially applicable to the world of virtual assistants!
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