Great managers at all levels of business should be the driving force to build a high-performance culture that delivers happy, healthy and highly productive teams. When a powerhouse of confident and effective junior and middle managers is in place, amazing things happen, and senior leaders can look on with a sense of admiration and pride in their managers’ and teams’ growing capabilities and productivity.

The impact of a good manager who is supported and equipped to understand, organise and motivate people to work together and achieve great things is powerful and far-reaching. Therefore, it’s important to ensure your people are equipped with the right skillset to succeed and bring others along with them as they achieve their goals and are promoted through the ranks. Astute investment in a proven programme of management development training will accelerate your management teams’ ability to develop and thrive so that they can learn to lead their teams with confidence, contributing greater value to your business and a positive force for success and career progression.

Check in and observe

Great managers are advocates for the customer and their team members, leading their teams in a collaborative, consultative and confident way so that they understand diversity and can bring out the best in their people. They are the facilitators of the company vision and strategy with the ability to enthuse others to believe in that vision and take ownership and responsibility for their roles. When you take a step back and observe your junior and middle managers, do you have a sense of admiration and respect for their growing capabilities and what they are achieving for the organisation? Are they true enablers of efficiency, higher levels of empowerment and engagement in the people they manage?

A practical Toolkit to accelerate development and performance

Do you see some or all these qualities in your managers? A powerful, targeted management development training programme can provide a set of highly effective how-to tools that can be implemented within the workplace straightaway. This can be done in a very practical way; here at MGI we have consolidated years of learning into a Toolkit that emulates excellent performance and gives people the ability to perform at a very high level, accelerating their development and performance rapidly.

Mindset and awareness – of yourself and others

To create this powerhouse within your organisation takes a high level of self-awareness and what we refer to as the Optimal Mindset; awareness of ourselves and others. This awareness of others is the key difference that enables managers to flex their style to motivate and get the very best out of their team, and to lead with integrity and authenticity. Having the right mindset, self-awareness and awareness of others is the foundation skill from which great managers can evolve.

Excellent communication skills

The next step is to be able to demonstrate this foundation through effective language and actions skills that empower managers to communicate positively, inspiring people to look for options, solutions and ways forward, while being alert to feedback. Excellent managers are equipped with the tools and techniques to persuade and influence, while being open and receptive, respecting the views of others alongside the ability to elicit information from others from a basis of high trust relationships. They energise and inspire their people with optimism and a strong sense of value which results in increased creativity, collaboration and focus.

Questioning skills

A key skill for managers is to think about questioning skills as a vitally important part of their professional capability, with an underpinning philosophy and belief that any question they ask should have what we refer to as a ‘high return’. What we are looking for is the sophistication to be able to question people effectively and in a way that gets a higher return for the questioner, as well as the person being questioned. Having the ability to use questioning skills to help people think differently about their most pressing challenges in a meaningful and effective way is a valuable skill.

The ability to listen to understand

Great managers also need to demonstrate effective listening skills with open and engaging body language and show that they understand the importance of subtlety in their language in order to maximise opportunities to influence. When people take a moment to think about their focus on listening, we find that most will agree that developing better skills would benefit them, their colleagues and customers.

They also need to know when to pause, take a step back, and take the necessary time to analyse and process to ensure the best solutions and ways forward, so that they can draw on the right resources within the team for the most effective collaboration and co-creation.

An appreciation of diversity

The real test of a manager is in their team’s performance and the results they achieve. Great managers constantly assess and develop their employees’ strengths and capabilities, while also demonstrating a genuine appreciation for diversity, valuing different personalities and the unique talents each person brings to their teams. They are empowered to lead by example because they are confident in their abilities and driven by a desire to stand out and instil an exceptional ethos in everyone on their team. By instilling a powerhouse at the heart of your company’s management, you can create an inspired culture of focus, discipline and accountability so that your teams can deliver successful outcomes, every time.

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