The direction of the company's development depends on the founders, but whether the company can run fast depends on the managers. For middle-level managers, there are senior leaders (head strength) and grassroots teams (leg strength) below, and you are the "waist strength" of the company. It is conceivable that if a company has a bad waist, its head and feet are useless. However, many enterprises have the phenomenon of "weak waist" or "waist deficiency". In order to solve such problems, I would like to provide all middle-level managers with "eight tricks". I hope these eight tricks can help everyone and let enterprises say goodbye to waist weakness.
The "senior level" mentioned in this article generally refers to positions such as founders and CXOs, the "middle level" generally refers to positions such as directors and senior managers, and the "basic level" generally refers to positions such as managers and team leaders.
The first trick: self-management, lead by example
The first step in management is “self-management,” in other words, managing yourself. You have to be a competent manager, you have to be like a manager. Your words and deeds are seen by team members; your every move is highly valued by team members. You need to have high morals, you must have good behavior. The first step to gaining the trust of senior leaders and leading the lower-level team well is simple and natural.
If you want to ask everyone not to be late for work, then you must first make yourself not late; if you want to ask everyone to be efficient, then you must first be efficient yourself. In short, what you want your team to do, you should do it first. If you are a person who pursues perfection and does things to the extreme, then you should maintain your characteristics, use your influence to "change" your team, cultivate excellent grassroots managers, arrange grassroots team work, and help enterprises get more rapid development.
It all depends on you, self-management and leading by example is the first step you should do, and the first trick you apply in team management.
The second trick: teach a man to fish, you do it
You need to teach grass-roots managers some methods and skills. In front of them, you are the teacher who leads them to grow. Sometimes you need to lead, sometimes you need indirect guidance, but you must not do it yourself. If they can't do it, you need to show them, tell them, and let them summarize the steps to do things and the pitfalls they encountered.
The grassroots managers don’t know how to implement the project in a scientific way, so you need to let him see how you implement the project; the grassroots managers don’t know how to organize the meeting in the correct way, then you need to let him He sees how you organize meetings. As you can see, he doesn't need your theoretical knowledge, he only needs your practical experience, and these are the skills you need to impart to him, and the nutrition he really needs to absorb.
It is better to teach people how to fish than to give them fish. The grassroots managers don't need you to give them fish, they just want to learn how to fish. You need to share selflessly, which is also your moral cultivation as a middle-level manager and the fundamental reason why the team is willing to follow you. This is the second trick you need to learn.
The third measure: sum up practice and form theory
You need to summarize your past or present practical experience, and turn this knowledge into a curriculum. Maybe it doesn't need to be too formal, but you must form a system, form a theory, and form a model. In a team, you are not only the manager, you are also the trainer.
There are many kinds of training methods, which can be fixed or random. You can regularly do training for grass-roots managers every two weeks. Before the training, you can collect everyone's needs and pain points in advance, and prepare the training outline in advance. On the training day, you only need to do one thing, which is to "tell a story", tell your personal experience, tell what you have seen and heard, and tell your profound experience. Of course, you can also use lunch time to spread your knowledge, which can be everywhere, even in WeChat groups after work.
You can give the team a glass of water, and you should stock up on a bucket of water yourself. Therefore, you need to keep learning, keep thinking, keep summarizing, form theories and output them to your team. Make time to study, watch various books, articles or videos, you can also share information you find valuable, let the team learn with you, and create a learning team. This is the third trick you need to master as a middle-level manager. This trick is effective, but it is more important to persevere.
The fourth trick: share regularly and let him talk
If you feel that training your team is too monotonous or tedious, you can use this fourth trick at this time. All you need to do is schedule a "tea party" with your team and organize regular sharing by lower-level managers. You can ask them to share the people and things around them, or their recent work status and mood, and of course the pressures and challenges they face. At this point, you only need to do "let him speak". From his statement, you need to make a quick judgment and give a corresponding solution. At this point you are no longer a trainer, but a consultant.
In order to dig out the pain points in grassroots management as quickly as possible, the rhythm of sharing can be more frequent, usually once a week is more reasonable. If you want the form to be lighthearted, you can put it in the last hour before get off work every Friday, and of course, you can also use it as a topic for discussion at the Friday team dinner.
After a period of communication, you will know more about grass-roots work and care more about the grass-roots team. Only in this way will you have the opportunity to solve grass-roots problems, and your problem-solving methods and skills will have the opportunity to be spread, and your team will be more recognized. your value.
Step 5: Define the system and build the culture
You must not be the creator of the system, nor are your superiors or bosses. However, your team is the creator of the system. Only the system approved by the team can be truly implemented; any culture posted on the wall is not a corporate culture.
Defining the employee system needs to be bottom-up, and building a corporate culture needs to be top-down. For example, what is the punishment for being late? The team has the final say. The system defined by our grass-roots team is that anyone who is late (including being late for work or meeting) will pay a fine of 100 yuan and deposit it in our team's "small treasury". We can use this money to do some team work Construction, even if it is just to buy an afternoon tea per person. Similarly, what are the rules for taking time off? The team also has the final say. When we see one team do this, and it works well, the second team will follow suit, and the impact of a good system will be expanded. However, the corporate culture is different from the employee system. The corporate culture comes from the founder of the company, the team culture comes from the team leader, and the style of the grassroots managers depends on your management style.
If you agree with the corporate culture, you need to build your team culture on this basis, but the team's system needs to be formulated and improved by the team itself. You only need to do two things: make decisions and supervise. This is the fifth trick you have to master.
The sixth trick: authorize tasks and monitor progress
Empowerment is not simply to grant your power to others, in fact, you grant him not only the power, but also the responsibility. Power and responsibility are often inseparable. If you give him power but don't give him responsibility, he will shirk his responsibility; if you give him responsibility but don't give him power, he will be unable to start. When you empower him, your power and responsibility should actually be given to him. How to do it is entirely up to him, and you need to have a high degree of trust in him.
In the authorization process, we only need to do three steps to complete this work easily. The first step is to clearly express the purpose and content of the work. You need to tell him: Why do you do this work? What is to be done? (Don't tell him how to do it at this time); the second step is to get confirmation and feedback from the authorized party. You can ask him: How do you understand this work, any questions? (At this time, you must listen to him carefully); the third step is to establish a regular communication mechanism with the other party. You can ask him: how often do we communicate? What is the content of each communication? (Be sure to let him make his own commitment at this point).
You need to make the above three steps of authorization into your habit, and use these steps as your authorization mode. In addition, you also need to clarify his rights and responsibilities when authorizing. If the work is not completed, what responsibilities does he have? What are your responsibilities? Where are your boundaries of responsibility? As his manager, you need to tell him this, not let him ask you. This is the sixth trick you need to master, and it's used so frequently that you probably use it every day.
The seventh trick: public praise, private incentives
As a manager, you must learn to praise and motivate, but they have different powers in different situations, which makes your management easier.
Don't be stingy with your praise for someone who has done a great job or contributed to the team, and it's best to make it public and let everyone know that it's good for the person being praised and the team as a whole. For example, it's definitely a good thing that the team finished the project ahead of time, and you have to give high praise at this point, because that's something you need to encourage and something that other teams need to emulate. However, if the team worked overnight on the last day to complete the project, then you need to consider whether it should be praised? Maybe you won't praise this kind of thing because it's not the way you encourage work and you don't want other teams to follow suit. When you find that the team has poor motivation, poor rhythm, and emotional dissatisfaction, you need to use incentives. Often private incentives are more effective than public incentives. You might as well use a "one-on-one conversation" to motivate him and tell him what he needs to accomplish? What can I get after reaching my goal? And to encourage him, give him greater support, make him more confident, and by the way, he can put forward higher requirements to him.
Praise to satisfy his inner desires, encourage him to become more motivated, make good use of the seventh trick, you will become a master of management, and your team will love you.
The eighth trick: keep your distance and establish prestige
As a middle-level manager, you play the role of the mainstay and link between the previous and the next in the enterprise, but you need to maintain a "safe distance" from the team, and you also need to establish leadership authority.
If you find yourself getting too close to the grassroots, then a red flag has come. In order to maintain the image of a "good guy" in their hearts, their workload begins to be discounted and their execution begins to decline. Your team is like a small child. They need your protection for a long time. You can't grow yourself, and you can't help the company grow. You need to manage this distance, not too close, not too far, too close can lead to danger, too far can lead to alienation. What you need to do is to take work seriously, treat performance clearly with rewards and punishments, you must have your own principles in doing things, and you must establish prestige in front of the team. It is not that the team will be afraid of you when it sees you, but it will be in awe of you, that is, respect and fear. The team respects your personal qualities and fears your management style.
To be an excellent manager, your spirit will also affect your team, so that more grass-roots managers become like you. This trick is last, not least, maybe just the opposite.
write on the back
As a middle-level manager, you need to highly understand and agree with the decisions made by the top managers of the enterprise, and you also need to teach by words and deeds and answer questions to help the bottom-level managers and their teams grow. You shoulder the heavy responsibility of the enterprise. You are the waist strength of the enterprise. No matter how strong the head or legs are, if there is no waist, the entire enterprise cannot walk fast, let alone run fast. You need to constantly improve your abilities, enrich your knowledge, and transmit your energy.
The fate of the enterprise is in your hands, work hard, middle managers, I wish you success!