Everyone complains about their managers, it’s a global phenomenon, but what are the qualities of a good manager that would make them rethink their disagreements? Everyone will likely have something to add to the list of what makes a good manager, whether it’s better time management skills or better communication methods when it comes to work. Leadership traits likely also figure on the list as everyone wants to witness and learn from the skills of effective team leaders who know how to inspire the workforce.
(Image Credit – Freepik)
Qualities of a Good Manager: Start with Regular Interaction
Listing skills off the top of your head might be easy as leadership traits are often discussed matter-of-factly whether at work or outside. Everyone acknowledges that the qualities of a good manager include being confident, taking charge, being admirable, managing time well, and a host of other awe-inspiring qualities. In many cases, this occurs as a result of managers genuinely lacking these skills while in others it occurs as a result of a mismatch between manager and employee who come in with different perspectives and experiences.
A study by The Predictive Index found that employees believed the top 5 skills lacking in managers included team building, providing feedback, time management, delegation, and communication. Interestingly, the study also showed that only 13.7 percent of the respondents met their manager one-on-one daily, and 37.9 percent of them did so weekly. More than 20 percent of them didn’t get to meet their managers even once a month.
With such little interaction between manager and employee, it’s hardly possible for the manager to manage well and actually oversee the employee. It is also likely that the impressions made during those infrequent meetings solidify and for the basis of the impression both hold for each other, making it impossible to see the good qualities of a good manager. The first necessary skill for effective leaders is to have direct and real interactions with those who they oversee, in order to do a good job of actually working with them.
What Makes a Good Manager? Top 7 Leadership Traits
The qualities of a good manager are not complicated to understand—they revolve around the basic skills necessary to work in an organization, only heightened in this case to accommodate their more complex roles. Let’s take a look at what makes a good manager.
1. Communication Skills
Basic but it is true, many need to possess good communication skills to get any part of their job done. They need to be able to communicate goals and plans to employees, understand feedback and requests from employees, resolve conflict between parties, communicate achievements to senior management, conduct employee reviews constructively, and innumerable other things. Managers with poor communication skills could be highly qualified to handle their roles, but they will still struggle to get work done in the way it is intended.
According to a ZipDo report, 57 percent of employees complain of a lack of clear directions, while 69 percent of managers do not feel comfortable communicating with their employees at all. This is concerning because they need to be the point of contact and resolution for employees in the first place. Building communication skills is the very backbone of developing the good qualities of a manager.
2. Adaptability
Nothing is ever static at work, whether it is the overall market or the demands of a client. An essential quality of a good manager is being adaptable to changing times, trends, technologies, and tasks to ensure they can help their team adjust easily as well. Because of their overseer responsibility, it often falls to managers to set new goals and establish the strategy that will dictate the workflow for the rest of their team.
Being able to respond quickly and think on the go allows managers to lead effectively, without wasting time or resources on decisions. It requires a logical approach to decision making, while also leaving room for creative solutions when necessary. When a manager adapts without being too shaken up, it becomes easier for employees to do so calmly as well.
3. Attention to Detail Is an Important Leadership Trait
Among the many leadership traits we hope to see from managers, attention to detail is also a necessary quality. Managers need to be aware of the big picture, yes, but they also need to be able to narrow down on minute details and evaluate them realistically. When an employee is underperforming, it can be very easy to criticize their poor performance and ask them to do better, but a good manager will be able to identify the cause and address the issue at the root, whether that is an uncooperative coworker or a delay in the resources reaching the employee.
An eye for detail can also allow managers to communicate better, provide more useful feedback, plan ahead for future roadblocks, shuffle existing resources around efficiently, and develop new strategies when necessary. Catalyst found almost 7 out of 10 employees stating that their managers failed to adapt and these numbers definitely need some changing.
4. Delegating
Among the many qualities of a good manager, we find delegation to be a noteworthy mention. Managers play a significant role in deciding everyone else’s workloads, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, depending on the kind of work that is done. To do this, a manager needs to be well-versed in all the details of a project that comes in or the tasks at hand, just to identify what needs to be done. Additionally, they also need to be aware of each employee’s strengths and weaknesses and assign work accordingly.
By playing to people’s strengths, managers can then ensure that work of the highest quality is generated. In some situations, managers can also decide to assign work to an individual with less experience in order to improve in the area. Deciding whether this is feasible or not falls to those with the skills of effective team leaders
5. Problem-solving and Conflict Resolution
What makes a good manager? Possessing problem-solving skills that are ready to confront any challenge that comes up at work. A good manager has to be able to break down an issue into its many components and resolve issues one step at a time. They also need to be able to prioritize tasks and rationally evaluate what to tackle first. Problem-solving requires some amount of understanding of traditional solutions to be able to incorporate them well, but it also requires out-of-the-box thinking in order to find a unique resolution to a situation.
Qualities of a good manager also include being able to resolve conflict efficiently. If the workplace is disrupted by problems between employees, both the work and the work atmosphere will suffer. Often, it falls to a manager to be able to mediate between disgruntled employees to resolve issues or assess when it’s appropriate to escalate matters to HR or other authorities.
6. Team Building
Managers might feel like they are overseeing a collection of individuals but a manager’s responsibilities extend to the maintaining of harmony between these individuals as well. To understand what makes a good manager, it is often necessary to establish what makes a good team and build from there. A manager needs to be able to identify skill gaps for individual employees and customize plans for their development. Similarly, the skills of effective team leaders involve being able to identify what is missing in a team’s dynamic and creating ways to develop that creatively.
Team building activities can be a great source of camaraderie between employees but if its not possible to execute such activities in the immediate future, managers should look into how their interactions can be improved during work as well. This could include regularly scheduled update meetings, cross-functional collaborations, optimal utilization of communication platforms, encouragement of constructive feedback exchange, etc.
7. Continuous Learning Among Top Qualities of a Good Manager
A good manager continuously works on his leadership traits and managerial skills and never stops growing. For a manager to guide his team correctly, he needs to understand the latest trends and industry updates. He also needs to have skill sets that are the latest requirements for the industry. Every successful individual will be able to tell you that learning never stops, and this is no different for managers.
From reading about the latest news to enrolling in upskilling courses that can introduce new skills, a good manager needs to approach growth with an open mind instead of being resistant to change. Many managers of today are finding it hard to cope with the Gen Z population but all it takes is a serious commitment to understanding their needs to manage them better. Similarly, managers who are resistant to the introduction of AI in work or the use of the latest tech will likely be left behind as the rest of the world moves forward.
There are many other qualities of a good manager to consider such as empathy, creativity, feedback skills, time management, body language, an inclusive mindset, a future-thinking approach, open-mindedness, a supportive nature, etc. Managers need to carefully evaluate the leadership traits they need to improve on, then assess what their team needs, and finally develop the qualities of a good manager that are necessary for their organization to thrive.