One of the most important elements to any well run business, affecting everything from the shaping of the company’s corporate culture to the effectiveness of their employee retention efforts, is the quality of management employees receive. While there may be hundreds of different managerial styles which may be successful, it has been discovered that among those most successful managers exists a trend of key beliefs which appear to positively affect their roles as supervisors. So to help managers to be the most efficient and effective they can be, here is a list of those eight most important principles held by successful bosses as they have been identified by executive search firms.
1. Synergy vs. Opposition
Many less effective managers have the bad habit of seeing every aspect of an organization as a battle with armies on each side fighting over one subject or another, from the rivalry between companies to the struggle between departments and teams. However, those more successful managers have been shown to view business as an interconnected functioning of various parts in a symbiotic relationship, wherein diversity can be a valuable tool and teams are created based on their ability to adapt and form quick partnerships across competitive lines.
2. Community vs. Machinery
It has become a common theme among many supervisors to view their employees simply as cogs within the machinery of the organizations, which must be continuously honed and tuned for maximum efficiency above all else. This has proven to be a flawed way of thinking, as successful managers can attest, instead choosing to see their company as a community of individuals and striving to find success on that individual basis, which will only build and filter up to success in the whole company.
3. Support vs. Control
Often enough, managers see it as important to be strict and imposing towards their employees, seeing it as important to push structure and productivity before all else, effectively squashing out most creativity. On the other hand, as opposed to taking such a rigged approach, quality managers try to provide their employees with goals and the resources to meet them and taking a step back to allow those individuals to do what they were hired to do.
4. Peers vs. Inferiors
Many managers have a tendency to view their employees as nothing more than their inferiors, beings of smaller, lesser importance whose role it is to follow orders and nothing more. To be truly effective, managers should instead treat their employees as trustworthy, intelligent individuals capable of doing their jobs without being the focus of constant supervision.
5. Empowerment vs. Fear
Ineffective bosses tend to view negative reinforcement as the best means of keeping their employees driven, and do this through fear, using the threat of being fired, demoted, or ridiculed as motivating factors. Good bosses instead drive their employees through a shared corporate vision, encouragement, and reward to give employees something to strive for and the means and support to do so.
6. Growth vs. Pain
Most people fear change to one degree or another, and managers are no different. However, this fear in bosses can be a great hindrance to the growth and wellbeing of an organization as these officials seek to shoot down any such developments. Successful managers have always chosen to embrace the opportunities represented by change, learning to judge and mitigate the risks inherent in these decisions, encouraging their employees to take chances and embrace new concepts.
7. Empowerment vs. Automation
Far too many managers are still clinging to old ideas of technologies as a tool to automate to maximize efficiency and serve to automate certain roles and functions, cutting down on human error, while quality bosses instead recognize these advances for their ability to improve their employees’ creativity and effectiveness while driving new means of communication.
8. Contentment vs. Toil
Central to any employee retention efforts and avoiding the unpleasantness of the executive search and hiring process is the happiness and satisfaction of a company’s employees. Yet another critical error on the part of so many bosses is the viewpoint that work is simply a necessary and uncomfortable evil, perfectly at ease with belief that their employees should see their jobs as such and nothing more. Contrary to this belief, effective managers seek to make the workplace as comfortable and at ease as possible in an attempt to ensure that their employees are content in their roles an view coming to work as something to be looked forward to rather than feared.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
