People Management is the ability of your Managers to understand, support and motivate your staff as unique individuals.
There are entire libraries filled with books on Management Theory, and you and your Managers may have been exposed to much of it on numerous training courses over the years. Yet we still generally don’t manage very effectively.
In my experience, this is because Managers are stretched in a number of directions and don’t dedicate enough time to managing up front. The consequence of this is that all of their management time is spent fire-fighting and dealing with problems.
Setting up the Manager-Employee relationship right at the outset will quickly free up more time than it uses and will enable Employees to perform and grow within their roles.
Great management has a lot of facets to it, however, there are three key elements which will get you at least 80% of the way there.
Firstly, are each of your direct reports crystal clear exactly what you expect of them? This sounds like a straight-forward question, but it is amazing how often the employee has a different understanding of what the purpose of their role is compared to their manager.
Secondly, are you equally as clear exactly what they expect from you? Do you understand what drives back of them and what they want from their work lives?
Finally, do they have the tools to do the job? To enable them to deliver what you expect of them and to reward them with what they want from work?
That said, good management is still a surprisingly difficult skill and the organisations I have worked with have benefit considerably from providing direct 1:1 support for Managers rather than throwing a few more training courses at the problem.
Call me on 07730 700258 if you would like to discuss how you can improve performance and motivation throughout your organisation with better day-to-day management.