The Sunday Feed
The fine art of People Management!
When you start a company, you realise that you will need to make many decisions. However, the most important decision will always be to hire the right people. Once you assimilate the right team, everything will magically start falling into place.
The story does not end there because this is just the beginning. You will need to manage the team with great skill and aptitude, not to forget that to make a lasting impression, you will need to lead from the front.
Let’s look at the top 8 things you will have to pay close attention to while managing those that will play a major role in the success of the company.
1. Be Interested: Try to know everything about the person. Their education, their experience, their family, their special interest and everything in between. Always remember, the way these people act or behave is highly influenced by their immediate surroundings.
To put this in perspective, be flexible with staff. A lot of parents now have taken up an additional role of monitoring their children’s education while a lot of time actually being their teachers. The schools on the other hand, shuffle between the ever-changing rules floated by the governments.
2. Be approachable: Easier said than done. People will not approach you if you shout from the rooftops that your doors are always open for them. They will read the tone in your communication and understand how friendly or approachable you are.
To put this in practice, always end you letter by saying that if you have a question, do not hesitate to reach out. But this only makes sense if your communications are not reeking of anger and frustration, especially towards your staff.
3. Be calm and collected: If there’s one thing they teach in emergency management is no matter what happens, keep calm! Very easy to say, extremely difficult to implement when you are being tested.
There will be a lot of times when your staff will not respond at the rate you expect them to. They might make mistakes that might look very silly to you. They might not understand simple things. Give them another chance and explain the problem.
There is a reason why the word “collected” is added in the phrase. The reason is that when you are angry, your mind is not in harmony with the rest of your activities. Everything seems to fall into pieces. This is when you start making more mistakes rather than rectifying the previous ones.
4. Admit your mistake: If there is one thing social media has taught us is how to go about finding fault in other people and their work. There are so many posts every minute that even an entire day might seem small if we were to revel in criticising them. After all booing someone singing out of tune is so easy than actually going up the stage and giving a performance.
We all make mistakes. But every event provides us an opportunity to get something out of it. If you apologise for your mistake, you will be seen as imperfect in that particular job but you will come out as a humble person. An extremely rare quality to find these days!
5. Make wellbeing a priority: It is not difficult for people to point out if your smile is genuine or not. Similarly, if you do things that contribute to the wellbeing of your staff, they will think very hard before leaving your company, even if someone is trying to lure them with a few extra dollars.
If you want to implement this, there are certain things you can do. For starters, give your employees an insurance policy. Something not many companies do. Sponsor their further education and training. Give them an all-expense paid holiday.
6. Be flexible: Times have changed. People across the world value freedom more than money. It is not they want to quit their jobs but sometimes want their companies to let them work at their own pace.
Work from home has definitely contributed a lot to this principle. But don’t be fooled. Working from home is not always as easy as one would expect. If you have to continuously be on the phone then it is more frustrating to do that home. In the office, you have your colleague sitting next to you to chat when want to change your mood devastated by a rude customer. At home you are on your own.
Also, explaining something over the phone or on Zoom is not the same as briefing in person. The human touch is just not there. So give them more time to complete the job.
7. Listen: Man has been to the Moon and Mars yet failed to really understood what it means to listen. No, listening is not hearing attentively and understanding the other person. Listening is about solving the problem or taking the issue a step further.
Every communication you receive, you need to remind yourself that there was a reason you were pulled in the list of recipients. You are expected to do something and the loop of listening will be complete when you act.
8. Don’t hire talent, train them: Well, when you are trying to make a startup work, you will realise that apart from other resources, you do not have the financial backing. Banks will not be interested in you and private lenders will cost you a fortune. However, you still need people to do the work.
The best way to handle this is to look for people who have the potential but have not been given the opportunity to use them to the fullest. I usually go for the following qualities in a candidate:
1. Attitude: How do they see the job? Are they serious or casual?
A person with a badly designed resume is definitely a no-no.
2. Communication: Do they communicate according to their experience? A fresher is expected to be scared and hesitant, not someone with more than 5 years of working experience.
3. Energy: People with low energy levels will not be able to take up senior positions as time goes by. You always want to hire people who will grow with you.
To summarise, if you understand the team and work with them closely, there isn’t a need to manage anyone. All they need is an objective and some directions to achieve it.
John Khalkho
CEO: Dolores Education
Photo: Antoni Shrkaba