If you are fully involved in the conversation, you will also tend to maintain a good memory of it, which will be handy for future reference.

If, for example, your employee discusses a problem with you to seek your advice, a follow up to the conversation would mean a lot to them.

Misunderstandings often come from communication gaps, leading to more and more frustration! While trying to explain something new to the audience, it’s sometimes found that the manager is wrongly interpreted or seems to be speaking out of context.

During breaks, it’s worth checking with the audience whether they have followed and where necessary, amend a presentation the next time. It’s also worth exploring where they misunderstood and learning from this for the future.

As issues arise, managers need to consider what they are being told carefully, whilst ensuring that they get all the detail before they act. Sometimes, assumptions can get a manager into hot water, so it’s vital that they find out what really is fact, before they decide on a course of action.

This is not just about the ability to impart information, more, it’s about the capacity to listen carefully and then frame ‘discovery’ questions appropriate to the contextual clues they have received.

When deciding on a course of action, it is important to make sure that you have all the detail down first, check that you have heard what you have been told is correct and then, only then, go for a course of action.

You see, how well a manager receives information, is at least as critical to success as how they impart it – probably even more so.

Make them feel comfortable and ensure they know that they have your undivided attention.

Smile occasionally

Lean in. If you have a grip on the topic of conversation, ask questions, – showing that you are interested in the conversation – and them as individuals!

If you are not clear about something that is said feel free to ask for elaboration or explanation.

When you get right down to it, there are a few misunderstandings about how to get the best out of your people.

The ‘headline’ might be that the better you pay people, the more effective they will be. Maybe, the more amazing the benefits, the more likely they will be to ‘go the extra mile’.

Perhaps the possibilities for promotion would work to ensure that each one of your employees are pro-active’ and stun you with their activity.

None of this is true.

Research over a number of years with public service workers in the UK, found that those who merely felt unfairly treated were more likely to suffer serious physical and mental health problems.

The reality is that where your people feel that you and/or your organization just don’t care, they will never be as supportive of the business goals as they might be.

And all it needs is the simple things.

By saying thanks for a job well done, saying good morning at the start of work and, well, just doing a few things that show you care, you will truly have employees who will stick with you through thick and thin.

You know, it’s just about being a reasonable human being and behaving with your people as if they are like your friends.

It costs absolutely nothing, so that really should not be too much to ask for, now should it?

If you’ve ever read any strategic or business planning literature, you’ve no doubt come across the acronym SMART for mapping out goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

Those are all fine and dandy objectives, but I’m out to propose another side of the coin – DUMB goals. Hear me out for a second!

DUMB stands for Dreamy, Unrealistic, Motivating and Bold.

If you stop and think about traditional and realistic goals, they aren’t that inspiring or exciting. They encourage status quo and/or staying within confined areas to achieve marginally better results at best.

Most employees can see through status quo goals and aren’t going to go that extra mile to achieve things that are already within relative reach – greatness comes from inspiration; not reaching a plateau that the ordinary can achieve with typical or expected efforts.

That might be why a majority of employees so willingly sign off on the goals during a formal review process – they know they don’t have to do a whole lot more to get the raise that comes from a satisfactory review next time around. Let’s dig a little deeper to see how ‘DUMB’ we can get.

Dreamy goals repeatedly wake you up at night wondering if something is possible with an effort that is truly remarkable. They imply going for that rarified air no one dares to breathe. It’s finding that special ’cause’ that will unite people on a mission that makes them feel part of something special versus merely putting in time to collect a check.

It’s like your kid at five years old saying he’s going to be President one day and you encouraging her/him to be anything they put their mind to. What happened to encouraging that blank canvas of wide open thinking?

Unrealistic goals are the ones traditionalists warn against and believe aren’t obtainable by anyone. To most, a job is a job until there is a challenge of the unimaginable or someone telling you ‘it can’t be done.’

Unrealistic goals push people to really push hard to move beyond what’s expected to stand out in the crowd and achieve greatness. Isn’t it a lot more fun to do something someone says can’t be done?

Motivating goals are those that make someone wake up each morning ready to take on the day versus figuring out a way to muddle through it looking busy even though time is being wasted. They are those things that people want to come to work for instead of calling in sick because they just can’t stand spending all day in the office.

Most SMART goals encourage toiling through the day in an effort to fool everyone around into believing someone is working really hard. A motivated workforce is tough to stop because momentum builds daily.

Bold is charting a course competitors don’t dare take because the fear of failure or success is too daunting. There’s a very fine line between failure and success, and most companies and individuals will walk right up to the line and toe it without ever stepping over it.

What is the worst that could happen if you stepped across that imaginary line and really went for something? You’ll never know until you try, and most people simply aren’t bold enough to try – we’re too scared we might not be able to return to the comfort zone we currently live.

I encourage you to DUMB down your goals the next time you’re charting the course for yourself or your company. Who knows what you might achieve?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Roger Bauer is CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc. a nationally recognized small business consulting firm specializing in business planning, competitive intelligence, marketing, sales, search engine optimization (SEO), strategic planning, and technology guidance. To learn more about the firm, please visit smbconsultinginc.com

Managers are uniquely placed to impact on a business. So, the way they communicate with their people is a vital part of the package.

If you want to ensure that you are successful in your business, the way you get information over as well as the skills you use every day with your employees will make or break you.

By making the effort to learn and enhance your skills for talking and listening to anyone, you will take a big step forward.

For example, there may be times when he needs to find out where internal systems are holding back growth, resulting in poor performance in a business.

He might decide to make a presentation suggesting improved measures which would add impetus by making the systems and processes more effective. In order to convey his strategy and get that established, it’s essential for him to communicate well.

Whilst special communication situations are important, it is likely to be just a small part of the manager’s role, compared with the need to interact with their people on a regular day-to-day basis.

Good managers talk to their people all the time, getting to know them well and building great rapport as they go.

Understanding how important this is, helps those managers who care for success to decide just how they are going to develop this skillset to the full.

When listening to someone be careful to not interrupt them while they are talking.

It is a sign that you are not giving them proper attention.

Wait for a pause in the sentence for any interjection or comments.

Even then, allowing a silence for them to gather their thoughts, is a really vauable exercise and often produces the most fruitful results.

As a manager, your listening skills play a vital role in a lot of real life situations, especially your workspace.

And how well you listen to your employees, can have a big impact on the kind of work output you achieve.

Yet listening isn’t that difficult, when you know the tricks…

Of all the key management activities that you need in your toolkit, the communication skills you need are the most important.

Most managers feel that this is all about what they say, yet it’s clear from research that listening is much more important.

Here is one of the key listening skills that you can use, starting right away!

If one of your employees comes up to you discuss a problem or query, you should ideally give them your full attention.

Keeping aside your own work for a little while, because its important for any person working under you to feel that you are available for them, any time.

It’s always fun to be a part of a team, where people put their resources together for the achievement of one common goal. What fun would it be if you could carry over the same spirit of dedication, focus and unity to your workspace. One possible way to go about this is – coaching your employees.

For an added advantage to develop your business, try working with your employees like they are a part of your team and you are their coach.

You need to encourage them, plan the action with them, make sure that they all know what they are going to do ‘on the field’, play on each one’s strengths and make sure you are there to listen to their problems and confusions and guide them as and when required.

As a manager your responsibilities include coaching your employees. You should ideally be a role model for all those working under you. Instead of randomly demanding results from your employees, learn to motivate and extract better results from them.

You should know them well enough to understand what they can and can’t do, what the extent of their knowledge is and their particular strengths.

If you are doing this for the first time the task can be quite daunting. Given below are some tips that would make your job simpler.

1. The first obvious question, is how to maintain your output objectives while simultaneously giving your employees individual attention and inspiration to give in their best.

2. You have to understand that coaching your employees is not leading them by the hand and spoon-feeding them. Rather it is building objectives, goals and motivating people to achieve the same.

3. You need to spend time with your team members to understand them better. You don’t need to have professional managerial training to do a good job out of managing people working under you. All you need to do is to take it one step at a time and be confident and assertive about whatever you do.

4. Whenever a person in your team does well, make sure you applaud them and give them due recognition. Even though they know when they do well, it always helps to get a word of praise from your boss. It  motivates them to do better in future.

5. Your team is a collective unit but each player is unique. Spend time with each of them and understand how you can motivate them best. Once you get comfortable you can ask them directly if you have to.

6. You can pick out one person from your team at regular intervals and study them individually – their work habits; their inter-relationships with other people in the team etc. This way you can figure out where they need help.

7. You can take tips from your own coach or mentor or take short-term courses to become better and more efficient in your role.

8. Like each member of your team is unique, so is the case with managers. Each manager has a style of his/her own. By utilizing your own strengths, you will find that you are able to extract the best from anyone in your team – and sometimes you will be better than other managers. It’s just down to style and capability.

But whichever way you do it, you have to remember that coaching your employees is a vital part of any and every managerial position.

I’m gonna keep this short.

Here below and to the left you will find lots of posts that relate to great management. These will supplement your lesson that you get each week.

They are in addition, not instead of! If you don’t know what this is all about, go to Super Successful Manager! to find out more!

Look out for new stuff appearing almost daily from now on, building into a cool repository of extra stuff that you might like going forward