Many organisations are littered with well skilled and experienced people are the top of their game who at some point get promoted into a management role in the hope that they will be able to replicate or clone their successes.

However, being good at what you’ve always done, doesn’t mean new managers (and quite a lot of old ones actually!) are well equipped to handle their staff, and get the best out of them. A manager needs to rely on his or her team for great performance, and as the captain of the team, he or she needs to take the responsibility for guiding them.

A very important part of people management is communication and listening skills.
Here are some tips to help you improve yourself, and perhaps become aware of your weaknesses:

Frame of Mind
You’ve got to be prepared to listen, and be open at all times ready to absorb information. If you have made up your mind after listening to the first three words of what a valued employee has to say, you’re not in the best starting position to make a truly wise decision

Body Language
This accounts for over a third of our overall communication and is something many are not even conscious of. Get out from the behind the desk, face your speaker (not absolutely head on, it’s not a Mexican stand off) and unfold those arms.

Constructiveness
When you have had a fruitful two way discussion, agree with your member of staff the best course of action, don’t bark orders and be totally prescriptive - give them a sense of ownership and control of the task, and give them some credit for the ability to intelligently input into the solution.

If some of this sounds alien to you, or you’re regularly feeling like you are lumbered with a team that are ‘not pulling their weight’, you might want to take a look in the mirror. Better still, invest in your own personal development and enrol on a management training course, where you can take your management and communication skills to a new level.

No doubt if you’re a middle manager in a small to medium organisation, things are a little stressful for you right now. The pressure may be piling up, and you’re probably trying to focus on the next set of performance figures. Worst of all you might be in the in the situation where you have less resources than you used to have around you, including staff to delegate to.

This is when you’re management training course skills kick in. You should be able to take a step back and take a holistic view of what’s going; don’t fall into the evil trap of day to day fire-fighting. Check with yourself that you have sent some SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed) goals for the coming weeks and months.

Also, don’t forget to keep encouraging, motivating and developing your staff, you need them more than ever, and together you can pool your resources to cone out the other side of this financial crisis fighting fit.

Ensure that your holistic approach and staff support are all geared toward the customer. Take greater steps than ever before to give them the best product/service mix. It’s much cheaper to retain and get more business out of an existing client than it is to go on the hunt for a new one.

Don’t drop the ball, and don’t panic.

In the face of the economic downturn businesses are having to cut costs left right and centre. Many are looking at their staff costs, which typically represent a higher proportion of overheads, and are encouraging redundancies and retirement, or worse, letting people go.

The result of this downsizing is that managers are left with more on their plate than ever before. That’s why it’s critical that managers utilise their ability to delegate. However, as anyone who has undertaken a management training course will tell you, delegation isn’t just a question off offloading tasks blindly.

To delegate effectively and efficiently, you need to invest in the personal development of your team and its individuals. You need to adopt a coaching role, and ensure that they have the resources, skills and support to carry out the task to your high standards.

Most important of all, you need to delegate both the responsibility and the authority to carry the function you require. Make sure their hands aren’t tied, and they are able to make important decisions on their own.

Don’t expect them to get it right first time, especially if it’s a new element to their job function. But if you spend a little extra time helping them learn and improve, that extra effort on your part in the beginning will pay dividends in the future.