What Makes a Strong Manager?

Every organisation wants a productive, positive and committed team, who support each other to get the job done. They want every employee to make a valuable contribution to the organisation and use their initiative to solve problems, spot opportunities and keep everything running smoothly. When they have found ideal candidates, they want them to be loyal and stay. In order to achieve these goals, you need strong managers.

Any leadership role requires a diverse range of skills, yet many leaders aren’t given sufficient training to effectively take responsibility for a team. Individuals often end up in management roles because they have a wealth of experience in their field, but sharing this knowledge and empowering others is a completely different requirement.

A strong manager has to both earn and give respect. They need to build trust within the team, encourage and reward, whilst also tackling problems when they arise. They need to understand the skills, expertise and potential within their team, which may not be completely evident in the job role that individuals undertake. They then need to use these individual strengths to best effect for the benefit of everyone.

A good manager understands that a degree of flexibility and adaptability can be all it takes to help someone to fully engage and commit to the team. They know that feedback and appreciation can really motivate and develop the skills and confidence of others. They are willing to invest in training and development to build on existing skills.

Effective Communication Skills

All of these requirements are achievable if you learn, understand and implement effective communication skills. Learning to ask the right questions, actively listen and alter your tone, language or emphasis can have a powerful impact on how you get your message across, how it is received and the response you get.

Effective communication skills can make you more approachable, more trustworthy and better able to cope with challenging situations. Changes to the way you communicate can turn a command into a request, a passing comment into genuinely feedback, or a reprimand into constructive criticism. You may be delivering the same core message, but the delivery means it is openly received, rather than angrily defended.

NLP Courses

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a communication technique that has helped many managers, coaches, mentors, teachers and trainers to build strong, encouraging and empowering relationships with the people they work with. It focuses on the way we think and speak, helping us to gain awareness of these processes, so we can tailor them to get the most out of every situation and every encounter.

NLP Courses can be run in the workplace or managers can attend events at another location. The aim is simply to improve your communication skills, so that you can become the sort of manager that people want to work for. With the right approach it becomes so much easier to achieve a motivated, productive, supportive and loyal team and the starting point lies with you.

If you live in Central or South Buckinghamshire and are interested in local NLP courses, Amersham based Cognisant Training runs regular programmes. For further information click here.