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To make good managerial decisions you must remember your role. You have your job to do first and foremost and it is this remit to which you should constantly be referring to in your mind. Then you need to listen to the facts in front of you and assess how they can be used to enhance working practices or benefit your company.

Different decisions require different approaches and the good manager will demonstrate the ability to change according to the needs of each decision. Budget decisions are in some respects easier because you have hard facts and costs in versus costs out. You should ensure that costs out never exceed costs in unless you are certain there will be long term cost-effective results and this can be hard.

Personal issues represent a trickier area because you will also know which of your colleageus and workers are of more value to a company. It is a hard fact that some employees benefit companies more than others and where there is a dispute it is often easy for a manager to come down firstly on the side of the employee who appears more beneficial but your role is not always clear cut and you first need to decide why the issue has come your way in the first place.

What do the workers need or want from you? Why has the issue not resolved itself or why have they had to come up the chain of command to get a result?

Then you need to listen to both sides. Your business head may say that one person holds more sway but it is also important to allow potential to develop and if an employee who is currently not working successfully is being held back or feels they are being held back and not achieving their potential due to personal conflicts then these need to be resolved. At the same time, it is is important not to agree too readily without having the complete picture infront of you.

For example, one of my staff recently came to me and said she felt she was being overlooked each time we had a review. She thought we were too harsh on her ability to communicate with others. I said that her reports had a lot to be desired and needed to be more concise and to the point but she pointed out to me that she always gave them to her line manager (a long term server with the company) and he vetted them before submitting them to me.

I asked him for his input and he said that he often re-wrote her report as he felt they never did the case justice. I asked to see her next original report unvetted and was surprised to find that the original report was actually clearer and more

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