Good management starts and ends with communication.
Communication is critically important because communication drives every human interaction – managing, leading, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, persuasion, relating, wealth creation, expertise, etc. In each of these domains, the quality of your communication is the quality of your experience, your skill, and your expertise.
(My teacher in Meta-Coaching) Michael Hall – constantly writes about professional communication, and now more than ever before, one of the most important skills in business and management, is to communicate constantly and consistently. Your people need to know and understand what is going on – in business today there are so many unknowns and the landscape is constantly changing. Through regular clear and transparent communication, you will keep your people psychologically safe, they won’t make up their own stories of what is actually going on.
Your success as a manager will depend on the quality of the culture created within your teams, which will depend on the quality of the relationships you foster, which depend on the conversations you have – because everything happens in the conversation.
People in management positions need to know so much more than the skills they have developed to do their job. Managers need to be developed, nurtured, trained, coached, empowered, refined and maintained, so that they can take care of the people they are leading. The soft skills once thought of as a bit fluffy are now crucial to lead business.
Managing people is a very different proposition – what are the skills needed to manage people?
Fundamentally as a manager the core skills of communication, self-management, language, tone, clarity, the ability to listen and not judge and understanding that people see the world not as it is, but as they are. People are meaning making machines, they will make meaning of what is said based on their own beliefs and experiences in life. How do make sure you are understood? Get great at asking the right questions.
Know your audience, understand that what you say is not what they hear. Use clean language, know the outcome you want, have the ability to gauge how it will be received and have an understanding of how your message will be responded to.
As a manager you have the capacity to change the conversation in your workplace.
Managers aren’t born – Managers are made.
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