How to become an effective manager

If it is people that drive business and managers who drives people, the role of the manager becomes imperative. Therefore it is essential that managers learn how to be both effective and efficient. A few tips

R A Sharma

In the present era, effectiveness, efficiency, result orientation, achievements of objectives and targets have become key words of the day. When an HR Manager advertises for recruitment he writes first "result oriented personnel wanted.” Globalisation has brought real competition and stress on not only management but on all responsible personnel. Also, a new dimension is appearing for an effective and efficient manager i.e. multi skilling. The success of a company depends, to a great extent, on individual and collective efforts, teamwork and achievements. So it is vital for a manager to ensure that people are involved, motivated and talked to, feel engaged and are in a frame of mind to deliver effectively and efficiently. It is proved beyond doubt that involvement and teamwork have fetched positive results almost under all situations. Although there are several definitions of effectiveness and efficiency given by different experts in various fields including management, international definitions as per ISO 9000 : 2000 as most appropriate and acceptable. Effectiveness is defined as the extent to which planned activities are realised and planned results are achieved whereas, efficiency is defined as the relationship between the result achieved and the resources used.

Globalization and Competition

Globalization has brought tremendous competition in terms of quality, price, delivery, service, responses etc., for which an effective manager is the requirement of the day. And deadlines are leading to stronger result orientation, sometimes at the cost of people responsible for achieving the desired results. A fast-changing work force and social norms are creating several situations where a manager needs to act as a mentor, a coach or a counselor to achieve the objectives and targets. This multi-tasking is important to address and respond to opportunities for improving a team member's performance, enhancing skills and knowledge or helping to handle a personal crisis. In effect, the concept of multi skills is increasing. It is quite common for trades like fitter, welder, operator, technician etc where multi skilled persons are getting preference, similarly an efficient and effective manager must posses multi skills to meet competitive requirements.

What's in it for me ?

People often ask this question and a a manager has to have an answer. Energised people can perform miracles. Individual performance makes a team leader or manager or otherwise. As leaders, some find it difficult to focus on getting the best performance from their team because of various reasons. Others feel they only need to focus on the required metrics and their people can take care of themselves. The success of any company depends on individual achievements. So it is vital to ensure that people are talked to, feel engaged and are in a frame of mind to deliver the desired results. A person will also have the immeasurable satisfaction that comes from making a difference to both people and organization.

Youth, energy, inexperience, work stress, new personal situations or career progression are all good reasons why people need some hand - holding or support. Managers have to take care of these. Managers find themselves in a situation where mentoring, coaching and counseling skills are required. Both managers and team leaders need to develop the ability to put on multiple hats.

A manager needs to recognize the need for and the difference between coaching, mentoring and counseling in order to change their approach based on their and the team member's needs. Organizations, too, need to focus on equipping their leaders to develop the right skills and attitudes to become people focused and result oriented.

Tips For Managers and Team Leaders

• Coaching : Coaching is collaborative, task - focused and deals with specific performance issues or project challenges. A coach works alongside, provides external assessment, helps clarify options, sets goals and develops action plans to achieve these goals. A coach during his work makes the persons very comfortable. He has ample patience until the person under coaching understands and develops.
• Mentoring : Mentoring is a relational experience that can deal with organizational, career or personal transitions. A mentor is not a career - maker, a shoulder for problems or a social worker. Mentoring works best when the need is to acquire wisdom through sharing experiences, demanding performance, providing guidance but not solutions. Mentoring relationships are based on a mutual, collaborative learning alliance, similar to coaching. Mentoring is more guidance oriented.
• Counseling : The focus here is on the cause of a problem and on alleviating distress. Counseling can help individuals come to terms with their personal problems, a difficult choice or a dysfunction in some key aspect of his social ability. Coaching is not appropriate for people who are experiencing significant distress. Counseling may require special expertise or training. Counseling needs special skill of a person to convince the candidate who needs counseling. Here also the counselor must posses the knowledge and skill of the subject. As a leader a manager is expected to create an environment of trust, open communication, creative thinking and team effort with love and regards, set a good example with words, behaviour and action, resolve dysfunctional behaviour through various techniques and recognise and celebrate team and individual accomplishments and exceptional performances and more.

Rx for efficient management

Although the techniques of efficient and effective manager or the principles of managerial effectiveness can be learned from books, but it is more important that the manager himself, first commit and make the firm decision to put them into practice. He must first decide that he, in fact, wants to become more effective. Once this is done, it is but a simple step to translate ideas into action. Firm determination is followed by implementation of techniques learnt / translation into actual practice to make a manager efficient and effective.

The first step for the manager would be to enlist actions he is going to take and decisions he has to make and then to rank them in order of priority into categories like important, most important, urgent, most urgent etc.

The basis of the priority would be the extent to which each would make him more effective. As a minimum, managers should consider defining their effectiveness standards, establishing their objectives and targets, giving parts of their job to others, delegating and structuring their time use differently. He must make his action plan on a daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly basis and implement the same. The carry forward has to be taken care of effectively.

In the present globlised era and competitive world without effectiveness and orientation result, it is impossible to survive. The manager must develop multi skills, adopt various methods and techniques for achieving faster and timely results. It will be easily possible for a manager to become effective and efficient if the above techniques are followed.

The author is the Managing Director, Master Consultancy and Productivity