How to be an empowering manager
Not everyone can run a business, or at least manage a particular division within an organisation. But if you’re reading this you’re most likely a student (who is standing in good stead to attain a management position in future) or even a business management student (who will most definitely manage employees and be responsible for company assets in future), and will therefore require the skills necessary to be an empowering manager.
All managers who are good at their jobs are likely to empower both themselves and their staff. Luckily, this skill can be learned and improved. Here’s a few steps you can take as a future manager to become empowering.
The first job is creating an environment of success. These frameworks should be in place under your supervision in order to create a team of performance-driven individuals. Make sure that your staff have been properly trained to do the task at hand. If your staff have the know-how when it comes to doing a job, it’ll prove effortless in the long-run. Secondly, ensure that you are in a position to both reward and reprove your staff. Staff will perform better if there is a reward for a task performed, and will also feel compelled to work if there are consequences for not performing. No successful manager has ever sacrificed either framework. An empowering manager will also remove any roadblocks that hinder staff from performing tasks.
Once an empowering environment has been established, it is time to set some goals in the office. Remember to set your staff SMART goals: that’s specific, measurable, action-orientated, realistic, time-and-resource-dependant goals. It may be easy to identify and establish goals, but then there also has to be ways in which you plan to achieve goals. It’s the manager’s duty to divide tasks into easily managed sub-projects that also manage to remain SMART. The most important job of an empowered and empowering manager is to accurately assess a task once it has been completed, discuss tasks with employees, and find out where changes may be made to improve on the organisation of tasks.
If you enjoy reading about management, or you’re enthralled by the thought of being a manager, then why not consider doing a postgraduate research degree in the Management Sciences faculty. Take a look at the Faculty of Management Sciences page to see the research courses on offer at the university.