How to be a good manager and win employee confidence?

A good manager is someone who can plan, organize, lead, instruct, influence, be fair and make decisions. One of the principal qualities a good manager must have is his ability to build a strong trustworthy relationship with his employees. Managers take more and more responsibilities while still ensuring the bottom line is met. They have to work with a range of people: the talented, the team players, those who handle stress well and those who don’t. To meet the challenges inherent in a company a good manager has to motivate others and handle all situations tactfully. Managers inevitably face many issues and problems. People go to them for advice and suggestions.
Remember, it is tough to get to the top. However, once you get there then managing the stress and maintaining the equilibrium is the toughest of all. Here are few tips which help you to meet the challenges of being a good manager.

1. Priority management. Life of a manager is busy and there isn’t enough time for everything. Hence, learn to prioritize thing and concentrate on the important things first. Know your responsibilities well then assign these responsibilities top priority in budgeting your time.
2. Knowing your team. Take time to know everyone in your team. Try to remember faces with names. This is important as this helps employees to open their heart to you. You should know what others in your team are doing, excluding the minute and trivial details. The basic fact is the more information managers have, the more effectively they can manage their business. Familiarize yourself with the strength and weakness of each of your teammates.
3. Delegation of task and review. Once you know the strengths and weakness of your team you can decide which members will perform best in different roles. Then start delegating responsibilities. Set goals, deadline and budget. Everyone makes mistake, so instead of reproaching them try to anticipate the problem and train your team accordingly. One of the important responsibilities of a manager is to teach other how to do a good job, therefore, be a mentor. Monitor the progress of the team and offer support to individual team mate, when required.
4. Motivate your team. What would make employees stay in your organization even after a bad day or bad week? Money may not be the greatest pull. Talk to them and find out what motivates them. Different people are motivated in different ways. Treat each person as an individual and give them equal opportunities to grow. Always encourage personal and professional interests of your employees. Organize team building activities to motivate them. Communicate with them listen to their issues.
5. Accept mistakes & being fair. As Alexander Pope once said “to err is human, to forgive is divine”, trust them, and give them a fair margin of error. Never blame them when they have let you down, at least not in public. This will damage both prestige and morale. Also, be careful not to criticize someone when it is really your own fault. Look at the failures of the team as your own failure and learn from your mistakes. Ensure that you praise them for a job well done and try to be fair to all your team members when it comes to performance evaluation and rewarding.
6. Be a cool head. Learn how to settle boiling matters. As you are the manager, everyone will come to you with their problems and accusations. If you support one and scold other you might lose the employee whom you scold. Hence, you have to be extremely tactful in such situations. The best way to handle these matters is to listen, evaluate and then respond. Always keep your feet on the ground, make it a point not to magnify a bad situation and take brisk and clean cut decisions.
7. Conduct Meetings & performance review. Conduct regular meetings to discuss progress of the team and to increase transparency. Make sure that the meetings are neither too large nor too small. A large meeting can dissipate the subject over irrelevant point of views where as an unreasonably small meeting may leave the attendees confused about the purpose of the meeting. Any meeting that does not end up with a definite understanding is a failure.

Along with the aforementioned tips, winning employee confidence is equally important to be a good manager. Gaining employee confidence is necessary to help employees reach their potential at their jobs. Employee confidence affects job performance as well as job satisfaction, and can greatly affect productivity of each individual. Employee confidence has received greater attention in the workplace because it plays critical role in the success of any company. When employees feel confident, they do their jobs better and stay loyal to their company longer.
Consider the following ways to increase employee confidence:

• Offer training and educational opportunities so employees feel they are growing on the job. Employees will feel more confident and enjoy their job when they master their area rather than struggle to keep up.
• Offer feedback consistently and frequently to employees. When an employee needs additional help or resources to complete a job better, tell the employee immediately and work to rectify the situation quickly. Make them aware of organizational guidelines and their individual duties.
• Praise a job well done and offer incentives. Few words of encouragement and incentives positively reinforce employee confidence. An incentive plan has to be formulated for both monetary and non-monetary elements to encourage individual performance or group performance, motivation, and commitment among the employees.
• Offer benefits for family and health welfare. Whenever an employee is facing any crisis in life lend a helping hand to support them. Employee’s sentiments and social situations should be considered at by and large, so that employees can approach you unhesitatingly. A happy employee is more productive than a grumpy one.
• Never dominate or authoritatively instruct the employee. Dominating nature always leads to negative results and lack of co-ordination and co-operation instead, convincing nature to carry out the orders and work, improves their performance.

Being a manager is not always easy. It is good to look for win-win situations but impossible to please everyone all the time. Hard decisions frequently have to be made and it is often helpful to talk through your disagreements and those between members of your staff. Being surrounded by ‘Yes men’ is not the best way to make progress. Those who disagree may sometimes generate better ideas.