Contributed article in our business series. Enjoy! – Kimberly
Being a boss or a manager and looking after staff is a role that often comes through your achievements in a profession or trade, rather than your skills as a leader. Many managers and small business owners have little or no experience of managing a team, and that inevitably brings problems to the working relationship. If you’re leading people without having a background in human resources, how do you become not just a good manager, but an inspiring leader?
Why inspiring leadership is so important
- Leaders are directly responsible for motivating their staff, so the more effective you are as a manager, the more likely your employees are to work hard, increase productivity, and produce their best work.
- Inspiring leaders can coax extraordinary accomplishments out of their staff, whereas inefficient, poorly equipped managers with few people skills are more likely to alienate their team.
Knowledge and experience
When you find yourself in a managerial role, be honest about your abilities. You may well be a popular person who is at ease socially and gets on well with colleagues, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to manage staff effectively.
On the other hand, you could be shy and introverted, yet still be capable of inspiring your team and bringing out the best in them.
The key is training, learning the fundamental skills of management and applying the principles to your staff. If you work for someone else, ask them to enroll you in a training course for starters, but don’t leave it at that.
There are plenty of beneficial training courses and books available that offer sound advice on how to manage people in the workplace, so do your own research as well as taking advantage of training opportunities provided for you.
Team spirit
The essence of great leadership is creating a team spirit, where every member of the team is valued and wants to contribute their best work. Teambuilding exercises can be a highly effective way of cementing good relationships, but there are plenty of ways you can capitalize on the opportunities provided during the course of a normal working day.
For example, if you need to work on a new advertising campaign, why not make your own video advert using input from all the team members? You could create a storyline and a slogan or selling point, with everyone contributing their ideas.
If they’re able to appear in the ad, the staff could be the actors, and you could film the ad yourselves. Assign team members to post-production, doing the editing and checking the tags that video ads use with a VAST tag inspector tool from VAST Inspector. Then get everyone together to watch the finished video. This is an example of how you can build team spirit and demonstrate your skills in leadership and management, and you could come up with a successful and profitable end product as well.
Being an effective manager isn’t something that comes easily or can be picked up on the job. It requires training, hard work, and a dedication to continuous professional development.
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