Creating effective managers

Your organisation’s managers are responsible for leading and directing others. Their success can have a tremendous impact on profitability.

This article will provide information about leadership development and how you can create a team of effective managers who can get the job done. Whether you’re an executive, a manager or a team leader, the following information will be beneficial to you.

Today’s business leaders need reliable tools that provide information and insights about how to be successful by doing the right things, the right way. It is impossible to know that right way without having the right information and a customised roadmap to get you there. Leadership development tools can provide your managers with a personalised leadership development system to help individual leaders improve the critical skills that are most needed by your organisation.

Improving the leadership and management skills of managers within an organisation is becoming increasingly important. Managers who are able to perform their jobs better and work toward the goals of the organisation can improve productivity with fewer "people problems", increased employee retention and greater profits.

Putting it in to the programme

Leadership development starts by collecting input from several sources in the manager’s work environment to provide a truly honest assessment of how their performance is viewed by a variety of constituents. Combining direct feedback from direct reports, peers, supervisors, as well as customers, creates a personalised programme for developing specific leadership skills based on that feedback. By starting from the real experiences of the people around the leader you can identify and capture both the leader’s strengths as well as areas that require development.
After managers identify their strengths and areas for development using the appraisal, they can develop the proficiencies that are most important to their professional growth and success. Some of the competencies that are targeted in leadership development are:

- Listening to others.
- Processing information.
- Communicating effectively.
- Instilling trust.
- Building personal relationships.
- Delegating responsibility.
- Adjusting to circumstances.
- Thinking creatively.
- Providing direction.
- Facilitating team success.
- Working efficiently.
- Working competently.
- Taking action.
- Achieving results.
- Cultivating individual talents.
- Motivating successfully.
- Displaying commitment.
- Seeking improvement.

This full-circle performance evaluation method can help reveal the areas that need improvement and allow managers to improve their performance and communication. Organisations can help managers to identify their strengths so that they can build on them and at the same time addresses their skill gaps so that they can improve on them. This process leads to continuous learning, team building, growing self-confidence and improved productivity. By using leadership development tools, managers are able to keep doing the things they do well, stop doing the things that interfere with their effectiveness and start doing the things that will improve their performance.

Leadership development is both easy and effective; it leads to better management. It gives managers the tools they need to maximise their strengths and the strengths of their employees. It also helps to increase employee productivity and helps them to become better leaders and communicators!