How to be a Great Boss - Top Tips
To be honest it boils down to two things, effective communication and trust - here you’ll find ten tips on how you can demonstrate trust and use your communication skills to best effect.
Let your team know what’s going on - tell them as much as you can. If you know something that you’ve been told is confidential, but it relates to something the team is very interested in/concerned about, be honest - say you know but at this point in time you aren’t allowed to pass it on. They’ll appreciate your honesty, and believe you on those occasions when you say you don’t know anything.
Give everyone feedback on how they are doing (as a person / team / dept). You can’t beat regular appraisals/one to ones - they don’t have to be formal.
Listen – if this isn’t one of your strengths then practice. You can easily find out how someone is feeling, if they need some support or a challenge. It’s not just about work either - by listening you will understand what is important to each of your team members. If you are office based, Management by Walking About is a great way to have a chat and listen to what’s going on.
Wherever possible involve the team in decisions, from how best to tackle a specific task to achieve the required outcome to where to have the Christmas meal!
On those occasions where the team can’t be involved in a decision - explain how the decision was made, and for what reasons.
Delegate as much as possible - this is good for you, the team, and the organisation.
Don’t micro-manage. Let people do the job they know how to do and use their own initiative.
Coach, teach and encourage – where possible give them tasks that expose them to people higher up in the organisation.
Thank and praise – be specific, try and thank everyone at least once a week - but don’t overdo it, otherwise you’ll come across as insincere.
Giving people ownership – everyone should have something that’s theirs, and every thing should belong to someone
Final thought – are you as good as you think? Which of these could you be better at? Could you measure these, for you and for your managers? And track changes over time.
