Being a manager is not an easy task. This position is indeed prestigious and you might receive higher benefits and pay if you can get to this position.
But being a manager has its own challenges that you must be able to face. You are trusted by the company to manage a team to achieve the company's goals. When your team fails to achieve the targets set, you as the manager will hold the greater responsibility - not just for you, but also for the failure of all the team members.
On top of that, being a manager also requires you to face many difficult situations. Keep on reading to find out what kind of problems you might have to face when you're appointed as a team manager.
Performance issues with your employees are probably one of the most common problems that a manager has to deal with. Seeing that you have to be the one who straight your team members out, you may wish to avoid this problem at any cost. What you can do to prevent performance issues with your employee is by doing better selection procedures when hiring, followed by establishing clear performance standards among the team members.
But sometimes, your employee might have to face a certain problem that affects their work productivity, or they are just too stressed out and therefore can't deliver high-quality work like they used to. What you can do is immediately provide constructive comments after identifying the issue. The quicker you can talk with them, the sooner you can influence their behavior to change.
Always talk openly, start by not judging - but rather list down the issues you found out. Afterward, you can kindly probe them to ask about if there are any professional or personal problems that happened thus affecting their work. Find a way to work around the matter. After your conversation, give time to the employee and observe whether their behavior is improving or not. If not, you may want to go through the discipline process.
As managers, you want the team members to be able to cooperate and function effectively as a unit. If there is a conflict between each individual, or if one employee approaches you to complain about their colleague, you may have to do something to settle everything down.
First, you need to find out what is the basis of the problem. Is it because of work task-related matters or interpersonal disagreement? If the main problem is because of personal conflict, then this must be managed immediately. If the disputes are interpersonal, have an honest conversation with the parties involved and let them know that behavior needs to be changed right away, and each party has to resolve it immediately to be able to work professionally with each other.
Conflict because of the interpersonal problem is not something that the company can entertain. If after a long period of time the conflict is not yet solved, you may need to take the people off of the team.
You might have one of your top employees that outshine other members. You want to keep them for a long time in the team because their work is spotless. Know this, if you have that kind of employee - you might want to go the extra mile to retain them. Ensure that high-potential employees receive fair compensation, challenges, support, and development opportunities. Or else, they will come to you with a resignation letter and a better offer letter from another company.
The key to your success is to make your team as productive as possible. The challenge is that all members of your team may have different needs and work in different ways. It is important to create the best environment for everyone. You may wonder, what is the best work environment?
First and foremost, is the team who can communicate openly and respectfully with each other. This will help to resolve conflict immediately before it festers.
Second, make sure that your workplace is clean and tidy. A clean working environment can help to boost productivity among your team members. Though it seems very simple, the messy workplace will have a big impact on your employee's stress level - which could lead to burnout. If you reside in Singapore and are currently looking for a cleaning service company for your workplace, you might want to check out https://www.luceoffice.sg/services/office-cleaning. They offer many types of services that can be suited to what your company needs. Last but not least, you may want to do a team outing every now and then. Going out with your team will affect the relationship between the members. Your team may also feel appreciated by the company when they are rewarded with an outing to someplace new.
When you are appointed as manager, you have to immediately shift your mindset and take a new approach. Remember, now you are a leader. It is your responsibility to supervise and guide your team to achieve common goals.
From the problem we have listed above, you may have noticed - that one thing you can do to avoid or troubleshoot the problems among your team members is by establishing effective and open communication. Putting this as a basis will give you a solid foundation in your role as a manager. The quality of communication among the team members will affect the level of employee trust. Learn the communication styles that work best with your team to strengthen collaboration.