How to Be a Better Manager

When you’re promoted to manager, it’s often due to your technical skills rather than managerial ones. You’re good at doing the job, so you’ll be good at managing others to do the job, right?

In reality, management requires a completely different skillset. You have to tune in to others’ emotions. Be a trusted coach and mentor. And delegate to, motivate, guide, and develop your new team.

Then there’s the question of training and support. The Mindtools research report, Building Better Managers, found that half of managers received no management training at all from their employers, and that only 58 percent of those who did thought it was sufficient. [1]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, managers who were satisfied with their resources and training tended to demonstrate the key skills of coaching, goal setting, guidance, active listening and establishing trust at a higher level than those who wanted more support. [2]

The first step in developing your own management skills is understanding what you need to learn. The majority of managers think they know what they should work on, but struggle to identify those goals when asked to define them. [3]

The good news is that there is a set of key capabilities that all managers need, regardless of industry or sector. And they can be learned.

This article explains the Mindtools Manager Capability Framework, which will help you to develop the skills and behaviors to succeed in your role as a manager.

The Key Capabilities of a Good Manager

Let's start by hearing from Anna Barnett, Senior Insight Analyst at Mindtools, about how the Manager Capability Framework was created.

The Mindtools Manager Capability Framework sets out 12 essential management skills in four related groups. The relative importance of each will depend on your own managerial situation. These 12 management skills, as shown in the diagram below, have a significant positive impact on outcomes for people, managers, and their organizations.

Emotional Intelligence

The first group in the framework is emotional intelligence, which can be defined as your ability to recognize and understand other people’s emotions and to recognize and manage your own.

• Self-awareness and self-regulation involve acknowledging and managing your own emotions. The better you understand yourself, the better you’ll be able to maintain your focus and respond appropriately through even the most challenging management situations.
• Social sensitivity is about recognizing and translating emotional cues from other people. Managers high in this capability are adept at interpreting workplace dynamics and are better equipped to respond to the emotions and needs of their teams. Which in turn can improve communication, boost trust and rapport, and lead to increased collaboration and engagement.
• Empathy goes deeper than sympathy. It means being able to truly understand someone’s situation from their perspective. Empathy is essential for resolving conflict, collaborating and developing solutions for your team and your stakeholders.

Motivating People

Motivating your team is about understanding each individual and what they need from you, to drive high engagement and performance.

• Inclusive leadership means recognizing and valuing individual differences to build a culture where everyone is supported and encouraged to thrive. An inclusive culture fosters individual innovation and creativity while generating security and wellbeing.
• Recognition involves paying attention to your team, recognizing needs and rewarding good performance. When people feel seen by their manager and their efforts are connected to organizational goals, it improves commitment, performance, wellbeing and retention.
• Building trust throughout your team is a key management skill, which is especially important during difficult periods. Modelling trust by being reliable and accountable improves “psychological safety,” performance, organizational citizenship and employee retention.

Developing People

Identifying opportunities people will be excited about, and providing the support they need to develop and grow in their roles is the crux of this skillset.

• Active listening focuses on hearing and deeply understanding what the other person is saying. Too often, people think about what they're going to say next, rather than taking in what’s being said, both verbally and non-verbally. Active listening helps you to build engagement and trust with team members, understand their perspectives and build stronger working relationships.
• Providing guidance to appropriate, relevant and worthwhile learning and development opportunities will inspire your team to believe they are capable of more. Empowering your team to learn and grow promotes innovation, improves performance and drives up retention.
• Coaching isn't just about acting as a mentor and supporting your people as they learn, it’s about creating a culture within your team that encourages everyone to coach each other as needs arise. Fostering this culture can create a team that's more adaptable to change and capable of self-management.

Setting Expectations

Setting expectations is about knowing how to distribute work effectively, as well as ensuring people know what’s expected of them and where they fit into the big picture.

• Transparent communication generates trust, an understanding of purpose and a sense of participation in employees. Being open and accountable, while sharing substantial information in a clear and responsible way, improves engagement, performance and retention.
• Setting goals that are challenging but attainable, both for individuals and the team, results in happier employees who are more committed and proactive. It’s important to build consensus on team goals, and to align them with your organization’s mission.
• Delegation is a common problem for managers. It can be difficult to let go of work. But trying to hold on to everything can leave you with an unmanageable workload and stifle development opportunities for your team. You need to identify what to delegate (and what not to), to whom, and what support they might need.

Let’s Develop Your Management Skills

Management skills are largely people skills. And while the framework may seem a lot on first reading, each skill area can be broken down, learned and improved with time and experience. Use the following resources to help you develop each of the 12 skills in the Manager Capability Framework.

How to Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

Start by assessing your current levels of emotional intelligence, before working to improve your understanding of emotions, their causes, and impacts on behavior.

Developing self-awareness is the first step towards improving your self-regulation, helping you to recognize, predict and control your emotions instead of letting them control you.

Working on your social sensitivity will help you to pick up on people’s non-verbal clues and body language, interpret them and know how to react.

While putting yourself in someone else’s place and trying to deeply understand their perspective is the focus of improving your empathy at work.

How to Motivate Your Team

Motivation is essential to getting the best out of your people. To improve your skills, here are some quick motivation tips to get you started.

Curiosity is a key element of inclusive leadership, enabling you to recognize, understand and appreciate the diverse individuals in your team.

When team members deliver, understanding what they care most about also lets you provide the right recognition at the right time.

Build trust in your team, by being accountable for your actions, and creating a sense of psychological safety. This helps your team work effectively together and to go the extra mile.

How to Develop Your People

Supporting your team’s development means your people learn and grow in their roles, with a clear path to improvement and advancement.

Empathic listening helps you fully understand their motivations, desires, and ambitions, and tackle issues and problems sensitively.

Empowering your team encourages them to stretch and learn, but they’ll need guidance, boundaries and feedback, to develop confidence to take on new responsibilities.

While building a coaching culture sets your team up for success, by encouraging people to learn, take risks and support each other to develop new skills.

How to Set Expectations for Team Members

Use transparent communication to set clear expectations for your team, keep them informed and show them the purpose and relevance of their work. Be mindful of the information you should and shouldn’t share!

Set ambitious, but attainable goals to improve individual and team performance. Agree how they will be measured. And link them to your organization’s strategy and mission so your people see how their efforts drive wider success.

Banish your fear of delegation and learn how to use it to boost your own performance and job satisfaction. Figure out what work to assign, when and to whom. And use delegation to create meaningful development opportunities for members of your team.