Essential Qualities of a manager

1. Managerial Effectiveness
Nidhi Kadam
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2. Managers are the inviolable solid pillars of organisations on which depends the
prosperity of the establishment they work for.
With the privatisation policy of the Government of India, the number of organisations
under the management of private ownership is increasing, and in order to take such
organisations to the zenith of efficiency, competent managers are the need of the day.
Organizations also have started investing in retaining effective managers and
developing their new cadre.
Managers are responsible for the quality working of the employees in any organization.
They should act as leaders to plan, organize, implement, and control the activities and
resources. They need to be emotionally intelligent as their interpersonal skills are the
key element in meeting the desired goals of the organization.
Managers should continuously improve their skill-set. They should focus their time and
attention enhance qualities like creativity, team-building, motivation, writing-skill,
communication, leadership, cooperation, trustworthiness and handling tough
situations.
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4. Creativity is the ability to look at the same thing as everybody else and see something
different.
-Charles "Chic" Thompson
A brilliant idea that sits on the shelf doesn't help anyone. It must be implemented.
A manager who understands the value of creativity and knows how to facilitate it,
also realizes project’s success more easily. Creativity is just one, albeit important,
skill that must utilized for success. 4

5. Creativity is now considered the most important leadership quality for success in
business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking. In today’s business world,
creativity is the key for major success and the survival of any business. A manager
needs to make the best of his employees, by initiating and encouraging their
creativity.
Methods to be role model for creativity –
•Lower cubicle walls
•Come up with many ideas yourself
•Call special meetings just for generating ideas and options
•Provide feedback on new ideas
•Promote your team members’ ideas to others in the organization
•Be inquisitive – ask a lot of questions
•Accept and promote different perspectives
•Admit when you are wrong and tell tales about your mistakes
•Use an Open-Minded approach
•Don’t get too wrapped up in the details where it hinders creative thinking.
•Create an inspiring work space
•Fund extracurricular activities
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6. Why do 3% of Harvard MBAs
make 10 times as much as the
other 97% combined? Due to
setting clear, written goals for
the future and make plans to
accomplish them.
-(What They Don’t Teach You
in the Harvard Business School’,
by Mark McCormack)
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If we think we don’t have time to write up our goals, we are never going to find the time to
achieve them. So write everything down – the goals, plans and values etc.
Robin Sharma’s goal setting template is complete in this regard and is straightforward. Not
just that, it’s brilliant and really works –
• Clarity – Write down your big goals and values and share them. If company behaves
incongruent with defined values, employees are unhappy. Goals must be SMART.

7. • Celebrate – Write down your company’s recent past achievements, appreciations,
celebrations in great detail to re-live them and get blown away. Stick them on notice boards.
• Educate – Write down how employees recently grew for achieving better results in work and
balanced their personal lives? Awareness helps making better choices and better results.
• Graduate - Sequence organizational goals and put them into departmental plans. It will make
goals real and tangible. You will see genuine progress and there would be no way to ignore or
procrastinate.
• Visualize - Begin with the end in mind. Get
everyone emotionally engaged in seeing company
having achieved all the big goals with help of a
vision-board or collages attached to a wall in your
office or executive personnel’s homes. It embeds
the goals into everyone’s conscious and
unconscious both.
• Attitude - Attitude to life is the window of the
world we look through. It is an indicator of how
well we get on with our goal setting. Keep it good
regardless the bitter realities or outcomes. 7

8. Successful leaders in
organizations don’t necessarily
have the highest IQ (intelligence
quotient) in common, nor do
they have the best training, or
hold the most MBAs.
In fact, the common
characteristic of them all is that
they have a higher than average
EC (emotional control), which
enables them to control
situations better and handle
their day to day problems, or
those of their team, from a
different perspective.
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9. Emotional control stems from an Emotional Intelligence and is based on two pillars –
•Personal competence: Internal Emotional Intelligence (internal management)
•Social competence: Interpersonal Emotional Intelligence (team members)
Emotional intelligence requires a manager to understand himself and his impact on other
people. Below is a 7 Step model to improve emotional intelligence and discover what drives
the behaviours and how behaviours help or hinder the success by sharpening the attention –
• Observe to gain a complete understanding of how we think, feel, behave and impact others.
•Interpret the common patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving within our teams.
•Thoughtful pause to consider how to interact with others.
•Direct thoughts towards actions rather than reaction to an event or circumstance.
•Reflect our interactions to form a valuable learning to use in future interactions.
•Celebrate positive interactions and reinforce the likelihood of future positive interactions.
•Repeat each interaction to repeat the lessons learned.
Emotional Intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we
think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of
ourselves. It defines how and what we learn; it allows us to set priorities; it determines
the majority of our daily actions. Research suggests it is responsible for as much as
80% of the "success" in our lives. - Freedman et al9

10. One crucial element of good interpersonal skills is being sensitive to, appreciating, and
honouring differences among individuals. Part of this skill lies in being aware of the
various ways individuals can differ in how they perceive themselves. The other part of
the skill is being willing to accept those differences without evaluation and to adapt
one’s own style and behaviour to accommodate the styles and behaviours of others.
Interpersonal Skills are THE most important skills you need for success on the job. 10
Interpersonal skills are a fundamental
requirement for any manager. Traditionally
communication skills were emphasized upon,
but now it is about interpersonal skills.
A manager has to communicate on a regular
basis with subordinates, customers, peers
and senior management. Interpersonal skills
are about communicating with others,
getting along with them and working
together for a fruitful collaboration.

11. Behaviours to Adopt –
Behave in a friendly way, smile
Make people feel important
Be a good listener
Remember people’s names
Focus on the other’s concerns
If you can’t do, don’t commit
Give and receive feedback graciously
Share the credit; when people excel, acknowledge it
Be interested in people and disclose yourself to them
Remember the facts of people’s lives and ask about them
Do the right thing, even when it’s not convenient
Be honest and straightforward with everyone
If you’re wrong, admit it but let people save face
Be encouraging, involved and enthusiastic
Be there for people when they need you
Behaviours to Avoid –
Negativity
Being and doing wrong despite reminders
Preaching what others should do and not do
Abrasiveness
Foul language
Overreactions to stress or bad news
Panic is contagious but unproductive
Making jokes at other people’s expense
Make them feel worthless
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12. “Team building” and “Finding the right people” are very important for an organization
as they have a direct impact on the work.
The Apollo Syndrome is a good example of this, where highly intelligent people often
perform worse in team. Another excellent example is Janis’s concept of Groupthink,
wherein members of a team are so like-minded in their pursuit for a solution to their
problems that they come to a consensus without having weighed the pros and cons of
each possible solution.
T E A M = Together Everyone Achieves More
Managerial Effectiveness focuses by and large on the managerial ability of managing
self, managing subordinates and relationships. This enhances the subordinates’ ability
to perform well.
Team building is about getting people to like each other.
Goal setting is a very important aspect in this regard because people want to belong
to something that matters; they want things to believe in. When we give them those
things, collectively they will work through many personal issues and challenges, and
they will also become more committed to the end product.
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13. Benefits of Team Building –
Improve the way team members interact and enhance their ability to solve their problems.
Better problem solving means better efficiency in general. Increased efficiency tends to boost
morale and productivity. It also helps to decrease stress, turnover and operating costs. All of
these improvements bolster the organizations public image. Once established an effective
team becomes self perpetuating.
Team Building Can Evolve Into –
•Defined work objectives
•Better operating policies and procedures
•Good communications as team members and as individuals
•Increased department productivity and creativity
•Team members motivate themselves and each other to achieve goals
•A solid climate of cooperation and collaborative problem-solving
•Higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment to the company
•Higher levels of trust and support between individuals and departments
•Diverse co-workers working well together
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14. The Efficient Team-Building needs –
•Goal alignment and agreement
•Finding the right people
•Members’ commitment towards the team and each other
•Members’ belief in each other
•Mutually setting agreeable and acceptable behaviours
•Team should be built on trust
•Supporting team decisions
•Generate conversation instead of offline discussions or e-mailing
•Seek team’s help and each tem member to get comfortable with it
•Make them responsible and accountable
•Help to build good relationships among team members
•Learn each other’s strengths and find ways to capitalize on those strengths
•Team members need to understand where they fit in and what their roles are
•Enhance their behaviours and skills
•Identify the subject matter needs of the team and align all members for contribution
•Members should be able and willing to collaborate and share credit
•Members should be able to participate and lead effective meetings
•Comfortable and competent at group problem solving
•Willing to continuously learn
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When we assemble more than
one person, there is someone
who is leading the effort.
The difference between a good
team and an exceptional team
is often a question of
leadership.
Anyone can develop leadership traits even if they are not born with them. While attending
management classes and reading books can all help, the best path to building those qualities
is to observe great role models and exhibit those same behaviours. Here’s a list of them -
•Leaders don’t hang back, they are neither half committed nor reluctant.
•Leaders take initiative instead of waiting for someone to figure out what to do?
•Leaders take responsibility not only for their work but also for helping others.
•Leaders communicate openly and honestly and leave nothing to chance or guess.
•Leaders believe in what’s possible and never use depressed terms.

16. Delivering change in anything more than a gentle evolutionary approach requires strong
leadership. Any form of significant change creates uncertainty and fear which manifests itself
as resistance throughout the organisation – sometimes for all the wrong reasons. Industry
bodies such as PMI quote that more than 70% of change projects underperform or fail.
Change Leadership incorporates all the behavioural and technical skills necessary to lead
people through a change. It is a specialised set of skills and behaviours that build upon line
management or "business as usual" leadership –
•Process re-design compares the "as is" with the "to
be" and identifies change sand the interdependencies.
•High Performance Teams are teams that deliver
results in excess of the sum of its parts.
•Facilitation extends from running meetings for 2 or
more people to running major workshops.
•Organisation design starts with understanding the
strategy and its impact.
•Project management ensures alignment, coherent
behaviours, performance and quickly resolve problems
as they arise.
•Executive coaching establishes outcomes sought for the
individual and for the company.
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17. In Asia, simple gestures that would be
benign or complementary in one country
could be a gross insult in another country.
Acts that US citizens perform every day and
phrases that they use all the time with each
other would be offensive and judged
negatively in many of the Asian countries
You cannot treat everybody the same
regardless of culture without adverse
consequences
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18. It would be a pleasant reinforcement to practice in today’s global marketplace. To be
successful, you cannot afford to lose time by “accidentally” disrespecting someone’s
culture.
•Do you travel a lot?
•Are you employed in a multi-
national workplace?
•Do you know to talk to
multicultural audiences?
•Can u resonate with many of
those regardless of their
country of origin?
•Are you considered sensitive
to the viewpoints and
experiences of others from
different parts of the world?
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19. Points to overcome cultural road-blocks –
•Read-up on cultural norms before your encounter
•Do NOT over generalize and avoid advice that closes the mind
•Reactions may also depends on context and timing
•Slow down for those who have different native language
•Think in terms of audience and speak to their understanding
•Don't make long speeches to lose your group
•Pay attention to your audience
•Be an active speaker and listener
•Smile and be open
•Shun humour. What’s funny in a culture might not be in another
•Adopt a formal communication approach until developing rapport
•Take the time to learn to correctly pronounce names
•Be congruent - same message by body language, actions and words
•Be patient and learn to step back
•Adapt and check meanings
•No negative questions or answers
•Ask for feedback
•Summarize if required in written
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20. Time management is an important aspect of effective managers. Managers
need to maintain their time intelligently and help subordinates not to waste
theirs.
Time management, like any learned habit, typically will take at least
three weeks to develop and then many months and years to refine until
you master the discipline.
Work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion.
-C. Northcote Parkinson
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21. To Manage Time -
•Use To-do list and daily-monthly-yearly planners
•Prioritize tasks in the to-do list
•Balance the efforts for long and short terms goals
•Find out your most productive time for critical accomplishments
•Take enough breaks to reenergize to avoid exhaustion
•Work at least 45 minutes non-stop before a 5-10 minute break
•Reassess to-do list and planners
•Keep a log of your progress
•Keep some time for fun and hobbies
•Relax as needed
•Sleep for at least 7-9 hours
•Learn to say NO
•Avoid time wasters
•Keep margins to prepare for interruptions
•Plan your day ahead
•Learn to multi-task
•Don’t postpone things you’ll never do
•Learn to effectively delegate 21

22. No problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it.
–Albert Einstein
Stress might lead to various problems and discontentment. Effective managers
should manage their stress levels and even of their subordinates.
Every individual responds and adapts to changes and their associated stresses in
different ways
Stress is simply the body’s response to change. Whenever external forces
(changes) are acting on our bodies, they trigger reactions on the internal forces
affecting the physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual aspects of our
existence. Stress is a measure of these internal forces; its dimension is pressure.
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23. Not all stress is bad.
There are three kinds of stress –
Eustress is good stress arising from motivating situations or inspiring circumstances
Neustress describes sensory stimuli that have no consequential effects; it is considered
neither good nor bad.
Distress denotes the bad type of stress, commonly referred to as negative stress or
simply stress. Negative stress can be acute (high in intensity with short duration) or
chronic (typically with lower intensity, but prolonged duration)
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24. To Overcome Distress –
More effective stress-relief strategies –
Exercising or playing sports
Praying or attending a religious service
Reading
Listening to music
Spending time with friends or family
Getting a massage
Going outside for a walk
Meditating or doing yoga
Spending time with a creative hobby
Less effective Strategies-
Eating
Playing video games
Surfing the Internet
Watching TV or movies for hours
Gambling
Shopping
Smoking or drinking
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