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Discover how to be an Effective Manager

Written by: Frank O`Toole

Article Overview: What do you want to achieve? What are your goals. Find out how to establish and achieve your goals to as a manager.

Discover how to be an Effective Manager

I can not recall the amount of times that I have sat down to write my goals and have just ended up writing a to-do list instead. On a recent management training course, the trainer reminded us that goal setting can be a difficult task if you are not sure of what you want to achieve. When setting goals we must remember what Anatole France said "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe".

When setting goals within a company all the people who are involved in the company need to be aware of these goals. People need to know how their goals fit n to the whole vision of the company.

On management training courses we are told that goals set up between a manager and an employee need to be established and agreed on. These goals need to be measurable and as strange as it may sound they need to be stretching or slightly difficult. The employee is there because they are getting paid to perform to a certain level and if they are not able to perform at this level or at least a minimum acceptable level then you must tell them goodbye.

Management training is essential when it comes to having to manage some ones performance and I recall many years ago on amanagement training coursethe trainer said always remember the three Rs.

When you are appraising whether an employee has reached the performance goals you have agreed with them always ask yourself the following three R questions

1. Do I Retain this member of staff
2. Do I Retrain this member of staff
3. Do Replace this member of staff

Obviously the third choice is a last resort but sometimes these things need to be done

Setting goals with employees is all about stretching their capabilities in order to deflect burnout and boredom. As a manager of people you need to remember that the name of the game is communication. You need to translate the goals to the employee's level. These goals need to be challenging enough to motivate and specific enough to measure.

Too many organisations will fail in fulfilling their goals as they forget or do not know how to establish goals up front. I am certain that you will be able to relate to this in some way? What needs to be structured first is clarifying the goals, mission, values and visions of the organisation down to a tactical level.

Management training will cover the importance of the vision has to be communicated effectively and implemented to the individuals. This is a discussion that needs to be clarified and thrashed out by both employee and employer. Establish what the employer is doing well and where they need to go.

The next part of establishing your goals is to define the specifics of how you are going to achieve it. One of the greatest challenges that I have come across on is that the goals have not been specific enough. What you need to do is write clear performance standards which will answer how you will produce the results that you are planning. Here you also need to discuss what key roles and competencies that this person will need to meet.

Under each of these elements you need to decide what will be needed in order to achieve a high level of performance within these elements, such as what would be needed to perform a high level of teamwork that can be measured. Once this has been recognised be sure to facilitate the right skills that are needed to gain these agreed goals.

Through creating appropriate, measurable and achievable targets you are half way to attaining these goals. Though as is often said on management training courses it is vitally important to put the agreed goals in writing so as there is no ambiguity, when it comes to measuring the performance

I will always remember solid words of advice from a management training course a friend of mine attended a few years ago. Always set goals that can be measured because 'what gets measured gets done'

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Article Tags: management skills training, management training, management training skills course, training course



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