Measure Your Supervisory/Managerial Skills

According to research conducted by management experts of all school of thoughts, 15% of the reason you get and keep a job is determined by your technical knowledge, skills and expertise.

What about the other 85% ?

85% of the reason you move ahead in your job is related to your people knowledge and people skills.

It goes without any shadow of doubt that, as a manager/supervisor, you must become aware of the critical need for a specialised knowledge on how you can manager yourself and your subordinates for peak performance. If you study professional supervisors / managers in various industries, you will notice a common problem in many (if not all) of the different situations men and women are facing ....... and the common denominator in all problems is always the same: PEOPLE.

Managing people starts with self-management, and it is one of your top-most priorities if you really want to be successful in your supervisory/managerial role. According to Tom Peter, author of the best-selling book 'A Passion for Excellence', the real challenge is retraining managers, not retraining workers. With this in mind, the sole objective of this article is to develop excellence in you, and to provide you with fundamentals and motivation to professionally develop and utilise your team mates.

The foundation for developing yourself and others is wrapped up in the very word M.A.N.A.G.E.R: Motivator, Activator, Negotiator, Achiever, Goal-setter, Educator or Evaluator, Risk Taker (that is, Courageous).

The above is a foundational truth in managing yourself and your team members. It highlights a principle and not a tactic. As a tactic, this definition would be ineffective; but as a principle, the concept works because it makes others want your supervision/management.

All professional supervisor/managers know well that when they put people first, their effectiveness and efficiency multiply. Lee Iacoccoa, the past chairman who elevated the Chrysler Corp. from the rock-bottom fauire to one of the top ten auto leaders, remarked: My philosophy is that people make business; technology is a distant second.

Utilise All Your Strengths & Resources

You will agree that the basic and the simplest definition of management is 'getting things done through people'.

The story of a teenager explains the point: a young, growing boy was trying his best to pull his bi-cycle out of the mud, but failed over and again. His father stood nearby and said to him: Son, why are you not using all your strengths and resources?. The little boy replied": I'm using all my strengths and resources, dad!, whereupon his father lovingly told him that he was not at all using all his strengths and resources, because he had not asked him (his father) to help.

The moral of the story is that all successful managers/supervisors utilise their strengths and resources by identifying, developing and utilising the physical, mental, emotional and intellectual talents of their subordinates.

Undoubtedly, the greatest untapped natural resource and the most expensive one in terms of performance/reward ratio, is its people. Motivating staff to make their full contribution is the only and the fastest way that a manager/supervisor can professionally play his role. Exhaustive research proves that a majority of staff members just await someone to come along and set them on fire. Consequently, all managers and supervisors need to develop their ability to bring out the very best in their subordinates by :

• learning what makes staff tick

• by understanding the staff's ' buying motives and hot buttons '