#RedBranchWeekly: How to Improve Your Overall Management Ability

What kind of manager are you? Do you like to take a backseat and allow your employees to work at their own pace? Do you have strict limitations and policies because you know that’s what gets the job done? Or do you like to get in the trenches with your employees and help out in whatever way you can?

Only 60% of employees believe they have a “good” or “world-class” manager. How can you become a part of that 60%? First, look at these three parts of managing: Employee coaching, goal-setting, and handling workplace harassment. Each of these aspects, when understood and mastered, will improve your managing abilities significantly. 

Our partners at Caliper Corp, Inspire Software, and ThinkHR each provide valuable advice on how to improve your management ability. After hearing about each, you’ll be able to tweak your strategy and hopefully become a better manager for your employees.

Read more: Techniques For Managing Workplace Stress

Caliper Corp: Why Every Manager Should Be a Coach, Not a Boss

Acting like a boss is good and all, but your employees need something a little different. Case in point: There’s only a small 34% of employees that feel engaged at work. This is where a coaching culture comes in handy.

With a coaching culture, employees are encouraged to put out their best work. Coaching facilitates growth. You’re there to tell your workers what they did right and what they can improve on. Enabling this kind of growth at work engages employees. That’s a win-win strategy if you ask me. 

Read more: Put Your Employees’ Mental Health First With These 4 Creative Strategies

But wait, there’s more! When you act as a coach and not a boss, you boost confidence by highlighting what your employees do well. There are plenty of benefits in using this strategy, and Caliper’s got the information for you.

Inspire Software: The Problem With Your Goal-Setting Strategy- And How to Fix It

An excellent tool for bridging the gap between strategy and execution is goal-setting. But, many organizations feel inclined to manage goals through a top-down hierarchy — but that kind of one-way structure can make it challenging to execute goals effectively. In today’s modern workplace, a great manager has a solid goal-setting strategy created by a strong team. 

Many companies still incorporate traditional strategies, such as SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely), but this traditional style doesn’t always work as well as it could. Redirecting your company’s goal-setting strategy is a productive solution to ensure goals stay aligned with your business objectives while keeping your teams motivated.  

For each goal-setting strategy, Inspire Software points out how to transform each goal and track progress to achieve exceptional business results. Once you know what to improve, you can help set the goals that are important and realistic for your teams.

ThinkHR: Types of Workplace Harassment and How to Stop Them

Unfortunately, harassment is a topic of HR that’s still prevalent today. One of the most common forms of harassment, sexual harassment, should not be treated lightly.

While 90% of American employees believe sexual harassment isn’t an issue at their workplace, it doesn’t hurt to have a plan in place. Better yet, have training sessions. Teach your employees what to do when this kind of situation arises. That way, if someone sees it happening, they can report it or intervene. 

That’s just one type of harassment found in the workplace, but there’s plenty more to be worried about (like microaggressions), and managers should be aware when an incident occurs. ThinkHR has a great read about how you can set up policies to punish any would-be harassers and how to implement training programs to prevent it in the first place.

Want to see your company covered in a future #RedBranchWeekly? Get in touch with us @RedBranch!

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.