Sunday, September 4, 2011

Guiding Your Employees

By Bart Icles


As a leader or manager of your group, you might think that your work is restricted solely to delegating work, monitoring progress, and waiting for people to submit their progress reports and completed projects. Without a doubt, those are all part of your tasks as a manager. However, your role goes well beyond that. You're not just someone who oversees their work. You are also there to ensure that they stay inspired and motivated to work, and to serve as a voice of reason and wisdom in case they run into difficulties while doing the job you assigned.

Employees would also look to you as someone who can help them do their job better and improve their careers. That is why being in a managerial position doesn't just require assertiveness training, good communication skills, and in-depth industry knowledge; it also requires coaching skills.

To be a coach to your employees, you have to take stock of yourself. What is your attitude towards work? What is your management style? Knowing how you manage your employees can reflect your approach to coaching them. You have to make sure that you simply don't just order them around and think that that is enough to spur them on to achieve more. You have to know exactly how to motivate them and what their concerns are about their job so you can put them at ease and help to propel them to work.

Part of having good coaching skills means knowing how to provide feedback and when. Remember that you shouldn't just dish out criticisms. You have to know when to dole out praises and when to come up with suggestions. Being critical just isn't helpful enough when it comes to coaching employees. They need to know when they have done something correctly and what other approaches are advisable for doing things, if what they were doing weren't yielding the best results.

Keep in mind that as their immediate leader, employees look to you for feedback and guidance. They will learn from you directly whether they are doing their job right, and you have to provide them with feedback in order to keep them on track. They have to hear from you if there are improvements they need to make or if in your opinion, they have already met their goals and made strides in their work habits. It all starts with you developing your coaching skills and understanding your employees' goals and personalities so you could steer them towards their objectives.




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