by Jeff H

Created on: October 08, 2008   Last Updated: January 20, 2011

It is absolutely imperative that managers/directors create a working relationship with their employees. While not everyone will always like each other, it is one of the manager's main responsibilities to ensure a motivated, compliant and satisfied staff. The manager will see substantial results in the end. Happy employees are producers!

Imagine waking up to head to work each day dreading your boss or manager (a lot of you do!) Do you think you are going to be as productive as you would be if you had a good, open working relationship with your manager? A manager's key role is not only to ensure profitability, but to get his/her staff to perform above expectations. The manager is the employees go to contact should problems or concerns arise, and the manager should go out to bat for the employee. Managers also need to realize they are a facilitator between many different aspects for their job.

Take a sales manager for example. A sales manager needs to develop plans to increase sales, deal with customer retention issues, suppliers, sales support roles, reporting of sales analytics to the executives, meeting customers, prospecting their own prospects, building their pipeline, etc. That's only have the responsibility. The other half should appropriately be called a Human Resources Manager. Being the go to person for his/her subordinates, the manager is tasked with dealing with many different issues and how to solve them. If an employee is under performing, the sales manager needs to develop specific responsibilities to correct their action and make them into an employee that is producing. Other office issues and employee complaints need to be addressed as well. The manager has a large responsibility and if often juggling many different things at once.

Managing is as much of a business tactic as is an art. Some great management tips that I have learned over the years:

Praise in public, discipline in private, tell your employee what they did right; do it immediately, encourage your employee to do more of the same, continually look at your goals and how you and your team are performing, make sure your daily actions mimic your goals, contrary to "The Donald", ALWAYS shake hands (keep some hand sanitizer in your brief case!),share your employees good fortune with your other employees, never let another employee feel like they are the outsider; keep them in the loop when at all possible.

These ingredients ultimately add up to the employee trusting and liking you. Who doesn't want to be liked?

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