There is a big difference between becoming a manager and becoming a great manager. The latter will remain in the memories of employees for years to come as an inspiration, while the first one may just drive some very qualified and valuable team member to leave the company. Indeed, everybody can be a manager; all it takes is to get the job title. Being a great manager is anot
her matter and one that is essential to the growth of any business. However, while there are ways to gather knowledge and collect professional experiences to prepare yourself to apply for a management position, there is no guide to develop the necessary emotional intelligence that great managers share. If you want to understand what employees expect from you, as a leader, you need to put yourself in their shoes and to consider their needs. From feeling appreciated to being empowered to make amazing things for the company, employee’s needs hold the key to great management strategies. Here are some of the expectations of your team and how to tackle them.
The Relevant Training For The Job
There is no denying that when you are promoted manager, your employees will expect you to have the relevant education, whether this is industry knowledge or academic education. It is important to clarify that most employees don’t specifically care whether you’ve been to university or not. What interests them is whether you understand what the company is selling and how to grow its revenue. Naturally, this means that they expect you to have a solid understanding of the business you work in and to have taken specific workshops or courses to cover the additional tasks of management, such as a fair understanding of budget management, investment and strategy planning, to name a few. You can also find specific management degrees that will definitely make a big difference during a job interview. Yet, from a team’s perspective, people just want you to be aware of their struggles and their strengths and to do everything you can to push the team further along the road to success.
Someone Who Acknowledges I Rock
Your employees want to feel appreciated. They want their work to matter and to be noticed. In other words, they need you to rock employee recognition. There is nothing more frustration for employees than working hard to finish a project or solve an issue without receiving any recognition in return. As a leader, you need to acknowledge their efforts, as this will encourage them to continue to care about the company and the work they deliver. As a result, you need to understand how their input has made a difference and to make them feel like they rock. In short, don’t praise people just for turning up on time; it debilitates the entire appreciation strategy. Recognition needs to be given in the context of a greater goal, such as acquiring new customers or securing a deal with a partner. Indeed, this will ensure that your employees feel like they an inherent part to the success of the business.
Someone Who Treats Everyone In The Same Way
Everybody knows that discrimination in the workplace is illegal. But sometimes the line between discrimination and unnecessary management behavior is very thin. While you may not have crossed the legal line, it is nevertheless possible that employees might feel treated differently. For instance, it is illegal to suggest a preferred gender or age for a job advertisement. Additionally, in the context of the workplace, making fun of someone because of their age will be perceived as discriminatory by your employees. While it may not be sufficient for a legal complaint, it will be enough to damage your manager’s profile and to push them to quit. If you work with an international team, it can also be perceived negatively to treat your foreign staff differently. For example, as friendly as you may think it is, greeting your French colleague with a “bonjour” every day might make him or her feel passively victimized and isolated from the rest of the team. And don’t tell them that you want to improve your French skills; It is insulting as they were never hired as a language tutor.
Someone Who Invests In The Right Business Tools
Your role as a manager is to understand that your team needs the right tools to perform. Whether this means updating your phone systems to get high-quality call monitoring and recording, or working with remote collaborative solutions to bring the team together 
, as a manager, your team expects you to understand their tech requirements. This is especially accurate in small companies where teams are required to hit high targets without being able to use the relevant tools – it’s a dilemma that small marketing and designer teams struggle with as they are the most tech-dependent teams. Technology is an essential part of your business performance, and while it is an important investment, as a manager you are expected to understand the loss that a lack of investment could generate over the long-term gain of new technological tools.
Someone Who Empowers Me
Empowering your employees means that you are giving them the possibility to become high achievers. Commonly, top performers are rapidly identified in the team. However, most managers tend to ignore people who don’t contribute to meetings or who don’t understand how their efforts are supporting the business. In truth, it is your responsibility as a manager to empower your employees. It starts by sharing a vision statement of the company; This serves as a motivation to help employees reach a common goal. It’s not about increasing revenues, but it is about becoming a better business. However, the vision statement can only become a motivational factor if your employees are in the know about the business direction and the organizational strategy. Taking all decisions being shut doors only make employees feel isolated and less valuable to the company.
Someone Who Respects My Workload
For Millennials, the largest workforce population, work is the number one cause of stress. While there are many reasons for the creation of a stressful environment, from a poor work culture to job insecurity, overtime is the most important reason for work-related stress. Therefore, as a manager, you are expected to understand workload and to respect it. For most employees who over overworked, it is extremely difficult to have an open conversation with their manager about their workload. As a result, this can lead to depression, burnout syndromes, and high turnover rate. And at the core of it, as a manager, you may not know what is happening because your staff feels they can’t mention the subject openly with you. The best way to avoid any issue is to reassure employees who work late and longer hours. They need to know that they are safe to discuss heavy workload and that you can help them to reduce it.
Someone Who Respects My Work/Life Balance
Besides workload, there is another important element in the life of your employees, and that’s the work/life balance. Millennials have been the first to express the feeling clearly: They want their time outside of work to remain private. As a result, many tend to frown at the idea of late emails and phone calls, as it is intruding in their private life. Additionally, at a time where many companies are trying to develop a social and friendly environment, modern employees don’t appreciate social meetings with their colleagues during their spare time. The evenings and the weekend are time that is dedicated to their friends and family. They are not happy at the prospect of a social event organized in the spirit of team meeting during a week’s evening or on a Saturday.
Someone I Can Trust
Ultimately employees want to be able to trust you as their manager. Trust is a difficult notion because it is intimately linked to feelings and emotions. Therefore, it’s likely that you won’t find many classes to teach you how to become trustworthy. As a general rule of the thumb, your actions will matter more than your words. A great example is a manager who preaches an open door policy and yet keeps the door of his or her office shut. If you don’t walk the talk, people will simply disregard your words and don’t put any trust in you. Being able to listen and to take action based on what your employees are saying is essential too. An employee who complains about not feeling respected by the team and who receives no answer or no support will find it difficult to recognize the manager in you.
Someone Who Inspires Me
Last, but not least, your team wants to be inspired to perform better. For a team, it’s important to be able to see in the manager someone who is working hard to drive the business to success. While it doesn’t mean that you should work every single hour of the day, it’s important to show your team that you are working hard so that they feel motivated to do the same. In other words, you can forget about indulging in long lunch breaks and short days.
