How can I manage my team better?

The 12 skills you need to focus on this Christmas

In truth, skills are for life not just for Christmas. As we take some downtime this Christmas however it is worth reflecting on the essential skills that managers and leaders need in our ever-changing, uncertain and complex world.

Thought leadership guru Simon Sinek is quoted as saying “Culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything - for better or for worse”. It is probably safe to assume that in most businesses we would prefer the “better” option. In many businesses that are looking to grow or change it is often the lack of management and leadership skills that holds them back.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation have stated that the cost of not managing people in your business effectively can run into tens of thousands of pounds. This is the cumulative impact of lost productivity, wasted training, unmanaged conflict and employee turnover.

 

Core skills are vital

At the heart of all communication is our preference for how we process sensory information. Understanding thinking preferences and being able to clue-spot how others prefer to look at the world is a vital skill if we want to foster effective working relationships.

With this information we can begin to have more meaningful and productive conversations especially if we are able to listen and ask questions in a way that is highly effective. We also need to be clear on the best way to present information to others in a way that is engaging.

With these fundamental skills we can begin to engage and develop our people by adopting a style we call “manager as coach”.

This style promotes proactivity, personal responsibility and accountability. Inherent in this style is the ability to provide meaningful and actionable feedback. Feedback skills are under-used yet the power they have can be far-reaching.

In our experience the vast majority of managers and leaders can significantly improve their team performance by enhancing these core skills:

Building on the foundations

With these core skills in place, a more transformational approach to growing your business can be applied. Many of the worlds leading companies recognise that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a skill that can be developed and is essential for business growth. The impact of being more emotionally agile can be exponential as it can help build confidence, resilience and well-being. It allows us to reframe thoughts and comments in a way that avoids conflict within ourselves and with others.

 

Black Belt Communication

Kanō Jigorō was a Japanese educator and athlete, the founder of Judo. He introduced the concept of coloured belts to denote relative ranking among members of a martial art style. Well-known mottoes attributed to him include "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and "mutual welfare and benefit"

The skills we are describing in this blog will allow us to apply these mottoes into our businesses using what Zentano call black belt communication. The applications of these skills are wide ranging but specifically mean we can manage performance improvement conversations well. We can also help people adapt to and embrace change. We can resolve (or even avoid) conflict. Ultimately, we can inspire and motivate our teams to be high-performing and catapult growth in our businesses

 

Ask yourself 3 key questions

1.    What are the top 3 goals in your business for the year ahead?
2.    Have we equipped our managers and leaders to step up to the challenge and deliver these goals?
3.    What would be the impact on the business if we failed to achieve these goals?  

Zentano’s Pathfinder programme has been developed to provide your management team with the knowledge, skills and mindset needed to catapult your business growth. If you would like to find out more, please contact us here to request a call from one of our experienced Growth Leadership Consultants.