Communication
How you communicate to your staff and how you ask them to do work is vitally important (see course Effective Communication).
However it is not always helpful to be too forceful. Listen to these 2 examples – which do you think is most effective?
Instruction 1
Sometimes it is essential to be forceful e.g. in a life threatening situation, however on many occasions it is better to be less forceful.
As a manager your team really have to do any reasonable request that you ask them to do. So, often it is better to be less forceful – many people prefer to be “asked” rather than “told” but you do need to vary your style.
There is no excuse for not always being polite and treating your staff with respect when delegating tasks to them (see course Generating Motivation and Enthusiasm).
Sell not tell
As already mentioned in this course when delegating tasks to staff, very often, whether they see it as a negative thing or a positive thing depends on how managers have delegated the task.
For example:
Manager: “I’ve got this boring mundane task that I don’t want to do any more and I would like you to do it from now on.”
Don’t expect the staff member to view it as a positive thing.
However, if you can find something positive in it for them then try to delegate the task in that way. For example:
Manager: “I’ve got this task that I would like you to do, it’s the sort of thing that you will have to have some experience of doing if you want to progress.”
The types of positive things (which will vary person to person) may be:
- Career progression
- New skills
- Different types of work
- More responsibility
- More trust from the manager
Be careful not to judge tasks by your own likes and dislikes. Just because you find a task dull, does not mean that other people will.