You need to be a lot of things to become an effective manager. Apart from work experience, management, and technical skills, soft skills are also pertinent. These are the qualitative skills that cannot be measured. You as a manager might be doing everything right – employing the best practices, utilizing the Blizz collaboration tool, following the industry trends, etc.
But, if you lack soft skills, a lot of things can go wrong in your organization. Here are the soft skills all managers must have:
- Communication
- Influencing Others
- Mentoring Skills
- Time Management
- Listening Skills
- Delegation
- Critical Thinking
- Trustworthiness
- Employee Recognition
- Discipline
- Management Skills
Let’s dive in
1: Communication
This skill deserves to be on the top of the list. No, you don’t need to be a wordsmith. You just need to be professional with your communication. Whether it is your employees, customers or stakeholders, you must actively engage in communication with them. This communication must be seamless. Good communication means that all your ideas are properly understood. Don’t just give speeches to your employees, you need to involve in meaningful conversations. Good communication also means you must be a good listener. Give ears to the woes of your team members.
2: Influencing Others
There are a lot of ways of influencing your employees. One way is to yell at them. The other way is to understand them and figure out what motivates them and use it to make them act in a desirable way. The second approach is usually taken by those who are empathetic. You need to develop this quality within you to become a successful manager.
You can never become an influencer by using a stick. Even if you use this approach, your team will start developing hatred for you. To become a good influencer, you need to be a good listener and use emotional intelligence to figure out the personality of their people.
3: Mentoring Skills
Often, those employees who are the most valued are the most productive ones. This means you must motivate, monitor and appreciate your team. If you are not doing that already, then you need to adjust your management style and give feedback to each employee. While doing that, listen to what your team members have to say.
Don’t try to micromanage them. With time, as trust is developed between you and your employees, give them space. Let them experiment with their own ideas, too. If it doesn’t play well, don’t discourage them. Instead, show that you still believe in them. On the other hand, when their ideas succeed, show appreciation.
4: Time Management
You can’t manage others if you can’t manage yourself. That means you as a leader need to value time. You need to become the kind of manager who comes to the office early. At the same time, you must value the time of your clients and employees. That’s an effective way of building rapport.
5: Listening Skills
A manager needs to be an active listener. Before formulating your response, you need to take some time and listen to what the other person has to say. You need to develop the patience to digest the words of others. If you do that, that means you respect their opinions and ideas. At the end of the day, when you have to make a decision or solve a problem, with all the facts in the front you, you will make the right call.
6: Delegation
Delegation is another key soft skill. It is not possible for a single person to handle all tasks. If you fail to delegate, you will end up micromanaging the entire department. This will give birth to a number of other problems. Therefore, you need to show the willingness to delegate responsibilities. At the same time, you must effectively motivate people to follow through the tasks assigned.
7: Critical Thinking
As a manager, you have to actively engage in evaluating situations, recognizing potentials and identifying issues. You can’t do that without critical thinking. Managers are faced with complex decisions almost every other day. Critical thinking means you must question all assumptions and look beyond the surface to make the right decision.
8: Trustworthiness
You cannot motivate and lead others if they don’t trust you. The right way of building trust is to be transparent and remain true to your words. You also need to admit your mistakes. This helps a lot in building trust.
9: Employee Recognition
When you see some employee outperforming, you must recognize their efforts. Words like “great job”, “keep up the good work” can come a long way in motivating your team. Other than this, public recognition of efforts and celebrating team accomplishments also make you the organization’s favorite manager.
10: Discipline
Disciplinary issues arise even in the most functional teams. Here, the role of a leader comes into play. A good manager is easily capable of handling disciplinary problems. Failing to do so means your authority has no value. To address such problems, leaders follow established procedures and implement rules to correct the problems.
11: Management Skills
It is your responsibility to attract, direct, motivate, retain, and train your team. That calls for management skills. You have to manage people with different personalities, cultural backgrounds, and working styles. You need to understand their strengths and career goals for motivating them to strive towards their personal goals and organizational goals.
Final Words
Even though employee’s skills are often ignored, businesses should provide their employees with a well-adjusted of technical and soft skills training is unarguable.
Great teams are built by great leaders. And you cannot become a great leader without soft skills. Start working on developing these skills to become as sought after as the Cox deals. Along with academic education, with these soft skills, you can create a productive team.
