The best managers try hard to motivate and guide their people to meet agreed-upon goals. Here are some tips:
Create Best Practices. Develop goals, requirements and performance thresholds to use as measurement tools. Be fair and consistent in enforcing performance requirements and work rules, and be honest with employees in your assessment of business conditions, in your communication of company policies and with your feelings about their performance.
Know Your People. Try to develop a relationship with each of your staff members so you can find the right way to approach, motivate and correct them. Spend a little time with each of your direct reports and encourage them to spend time with each of their direct reports. Spending time together helps solidify teamwork, clarifies any issues, and ensures you and your employees are being accountable to each other.
Communicate. Stop relying on email and memos; have personal conversations with the people in your group. Allow your employees to be honest with you. Spend at least a little personal time with each person every month if you can, and be a good listener. You’ll learn a lot about how to deal with your staff members if you hear what they say.
Leave Well Enough Alone. Sometimes, managers feel that employees can perform better and produce more, but if they’ve found a comfortable and satisfactory balance, it’s best not to disturb. Resist the temptation to over-mange.
Take Cues. Some days you’ll work hard to mold an employee’s behavior and performance when what he or she really needed was to be left alone to do their job. Other days you’ll leave people alone when what they really needed was to be working with someone. Try to determine each day who needs time from you and who needs to be left alone.