Are You a Good Manager?

That is definitely a good question all managers must ask themselves. Even if your business is doing well, are you sure the company is being managed as well as it should? All managers must have confidence in themselves, but not blindly so. Here is a list of questions to ask yourself that will indicate whether you are a good manager or not:

Do You Always Tell Employees What to Do?

Are you one of those bosses who always tell employees what to do, no matter how small? Then you are a micromanager. Micromanagement has its usefulness, but most of the time it ends up being a disaster. It’s important to understand whether something needs to be micromanaged or not before doing so. When speaking about the workplace environment is general, it is not something that needs micromanaging. Managers can be compared to parents. Parents who are too close to their children, those so-called helicopter parents, do as much damage to kids as parents who are too distant. So, make sure you are not smothering your employees by over managing. You can hire a consultant, like Global Resources LLC, to find out if your management style actually fits the business.

Do Project Teams have Their Own Leaders?

Various tasks or projects often involve a team of employees working together in the modern office. It’s important to ask yourself if these teams report directly to you, or whether the teams each have leaders that report to the management. If your answer to the first question is no, then it’s important to take a step back and analyze the situation. If small, individual teams are leaderless, then who tells the employees what to do? Who makes sure everyone gets things done on time? It’s very important to establish internal hierarchies within teams. A team leader will prevent people from wasting time and delaying projects. Therefore, allow teams to have their own leader, and then have that leader report directly to you, the manager.

Do You Constantly Need to Nudge Employees to Get Them to Do Their Jobs?

If you do, then that means your employees are lacking initiative and motivation necessary to make the company successful. Unmotivated employees are also a side effect of micromanagement. If your business is to be successful, then everyone needs to be invested in its success. Your employees need to actually like what they do. Employees are usually the ones who can tell if a certain project or a sector of the company is doing as well as it should. If they are unmotivated, they will be unwilling to fix problems they can clearly observe.

Can the Business Survive a Day Without You?

If not, then that means the company is being severely micromanaged and lacks a structure that drives competence. This should be worrying to any invested manager. Learn about what you could do better to establish leadership structures and motivate employees more.

Occasionally, try to collect employee feedback on their job satisfaction. You can conduct anonymous surveys on whether employees think they are being managed properly. This level of feedback is necessary to make the workplace more efficient and productive.