5 essential skills for a good manager

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What makes a good manager? While there are different styles of management, from directive to participative to delegative, managing is above all about leading a team, animating and directing it to achieve set objectives. It therefore requires special skills, combined with soft skills or personal qualities.

So, what are the main skills expected in a good manager?

Listening to your employees

Providing leadership

Be responsible

Expressing gratitude

Working independently and as part of a team

Listening to your employees

Listening to your employees is undoubtedly the first managerial skill to be implemented. Often underestimated,listening is essential for analyzing your team's needs, detecting difficulties encountered, resolving a conflict, or, better still, anticipating a problem! This is part of the fundamentals of human resources management.

By making yourself available to your employees, you act on their confidence and motivation. Regular communication with them allows you to get to know them better and understand their expectations. You can alternate individual appointments with team meetings, or informal chats over the coffee machine.

Providing leadership

The leader inspires, possesses a capacity for influence and is able to draw his collaborators along with him in mutual trust. If you're not a leader at heart, however, you can work on your leadership by motivating your troops, driving them enthusiastically towards the goal. This translates, for example, intothe ability to convince and unite around the interest of a project.

It's a question of clearly explaining to your staff the objectives to be achieved and the results expected, while giving them the necessary means to achieve them and accompanying them with optimism and conviction.

Be responsible

"Who is accountable to an authority for his actions or the actions of those in his care"

Being a good manager also implies implementing an organizational strategy and knowing how to take a step back to get a global view of his or her department. In fact, it's the manager who sets the broad direction of work and ensures that it stays on course.He must assume his or her responsibilities, which implies being able to make decisions and sometimes having to make a decision, particularly in the event of difficulty or disagreement.

Some decisions are easier than others, such as recruiting, appraising, deciding on promotions, but it can be more complicated to sanction or dismiss an employee. In some cases,consulting your team is useful, especially when making organizational changes. Finally, all decision-making should preferably be carried out without authoritarianism.

Expressing appreciation

Acknowledging your teammates has the advantage of preserving and maintaining their motivation. It's the manager's role toacknowledge a person's value or skills, the investment made in the work or the results achieved. On a personal level, the employee's self-esteem and sense of usefulness are strengthened.

On a professional level, this has the effect of optimizing relations with one's team, giving meaning to work and, above all, is the main lever of motivation.

Working independently and as part of a team

Managing involves working both alone, so being autonomous, and as part of a team, which needs to be coordinated and led. This requires a proven sense of organization to plan and allocate tasks - and to delegate -, to monitor the progress of work and check that objectives are being met.

At the same time, the manager must not lose sight of themanagement of his human resources, accompanying varied profiles but also unique personalities, which requires great flexibility and a certain amount of diplomacy.

Do you have most of these skills? If you don't already hold a managerial position, apply for a promotion fast!