As business owners, your actions have the immense potential of affecting your entire staff. Avoid these caustic management behaviours to keep both your business and team healthy as well as happy
Is your staff unhappy at work? Are they not enthusiastic enough about the success of the business? Do you see a lack of motivation in the initiatives that they pursue at work? If that is the case, then there is a strong chance that you haven’t been managing them well enough. The loopholes in existing management behaviours are often identified in dire circumstances when optical businesses are struggling to identify the sudden drop in business figures. However, the important thing to remember is that it’s never too late to make changes, rather improve the management.
Before we delve deeper, it is important to understand that the management’s behaviour is one of the key contributors towards creating an environment for the employees to work in. And you can do your best if you keep a check on these behaviours. Negative management behaviours could well be the difference between a well-oiled team that is giving their 100 percent and a group of individuals who are more than happy to pass the buck. As part of the management, your expertise lies in identifying these behaviours and of course changing them for the better.
Listed below are five such unhealthy management behaviours that you need to change to ensure better growth opportunities for your optical business.
Accentuating the negative
Do you regularly catch your staff doing the wrong things? To make matters worse, do you even scold them when they do so? Though it may feel like the right thing to do, this way of handling negative behaviour often turns out to be counterproductive. In extreme cases, such incidents go against the overall working environment. After all, no one likes to be scolded for their faults amidst their peers, do they?
You need to remember that everyone wants to perform to their best. Though they aren’t able to, deep down they have the desire to be the star performers in whatever they do. So accentuating the negative will only take them further away from their goals. On the contrary, highlighting every positive thing that they do will help build their confidence. Gradually, the motivation will also pave way for them to learn to trust you more.
If you want to point out someone’s negative behaviour, make sure you do it by also highlighting the positive behaviour displayed by them in another situation. Alternatively, you can also look for someone who performs the concerned task the way it should be
and then compliment him in front of the others.
In this way, the not-so-good performers will be able to learn better. They will understand what is required from them and accordingly alter their approach towards work.
The best part is that even your top performers will stay motivated. So, it’s a double sided gain that no business person would want to let go of.
Lack of accountability
Before you set out to teach your team the importance of accountability, you need to understand that it all starts with you. Additionally, always remember that the best way to lead your team is by example.
We recommend that you hold yourself accountable for each of your tasks. This also means that every time you miss out on something, make sure you apologise to your team. After all, in the organisational hierarchy, each employee is important.
Similarly, you also need to keep your promises. If you yourself aren’t keeping your promises, how can you expect your staff to do the same? But if you lead by example, it will empower all your staff members to do the same.
Proper accountability will also help you to bridge the gap between the not-so-good performers and your top talents. Currently, as the non-performers are not being held accountable, the motivated ones end up doing most of the tasks. By holding each of them accountable, you will not just raise the standards of your team but will also help them grow at an individual level. And to top it all,
it will in turn help in improving productivity as well.
Not enough delegation
A lot of people may find it hard to believe but delegation, if used correctly, is one managerial skill that can help you propel your business far and wide. However, the problem with most business managers is that they lack the courage to delegate work. They feel much safer if they are the ones who do the important tasks. But they fail to understand that this way of working introduces bottlenecks into the system.
What’s more is that no delegation negates the idea of having a team. Basically, why have a team if you don’t want them to work?
Delegation, on the other hand, empowers your employees to go ahead confidently with completing tasks. Now there is a risk in implementing this practice. For instance, in the beginning, things might not pan out as smoothly as you would like. But, this is a risk that you, as the business owner, will have to take. You might have to guide them in their day-to-day activities. However with time, they will mature and would not need your intervention. This will also mean that your business will run smoothly
allowing you to focus on expansion and other aspects.
Lack of team meetings
Communication is often referred to as the fuel that drives teams and very rightly so, it is. As much as, communicating the objectives to the team is important, it is equally important to hear out their complaints when the situation arises.
This is where the importance of team meetings come into the picture. So, if you are not conducting regular team meetings, then you are missing out on the opportunity to follow up on your staff’s concern, your concerns, remind everyone of your business vision and build an atmosphere where everyone sees the bigger picture. Regular meetings are an excellent way to update your staff about the developments.
Yes, the team meetings might not give you instant results. You may also argue that you have other pressing business concerns to address and conducting meetings are thus a waste of time. However, without regular team meetings, no one knows what others are doing and this could lead to inefficient behaviors. Also, without sufficient communication, your team might feel left out of the loop and thus can begin to lose interest in their jobs.
Micromanaging a bit too often
Yes, we understand that as a business owner, you would also want every task to be completed in an efficient manner. But, you need to accept that micromanaging is not the answer to all your efficiency concerns. In fact, it is among the top reasons why employees get demotivated.
To put it simply, micromanaging or repeatedly interfering in what your employees are doing can bring more bad than good for the work environment in your optical store. When you micromanage, you make a clear statement that you don’t trust the judgement of your employees.
It also infuses into their brain the idea that you are the only person who can do the job. So, by micromanaging you don’t just make your team feel unworthy but also keep yourself very busy.
This means you will be occupied with guiding your employees through everyday tasks when ideally you should be the one exploring growth opportunities for your business.
As a solution to this problem, you need to encourage your employees to take full responsibility of their tasks. No, we are not asking you to trust them blindly. But, teach them to make the right choices. Of course, you have to be available to guide them, whenever they require.
They still have the option to come up to you if they get stuck somewhere but now they are owners of their
own tasks. This makes them more dedicated towards achieving results.
Finally, there is no need to press the panic button if you are guilty of any of the above behaviours. The idea of alerting you of these negative behaviours is to empower you to pinpoint the shortcomings in your business strategy. By identifying the shortcomings, you have almost won half the battle. The next stage is to make the changes and accelerate the growth of your business. Basically, now it’s time to win the other half of the battle.
As a business owner, your primary responsibility is to ensure that you handle the unwanted behaviours one at a time. Yes! It is equally important to ensure that you handle the changes gradually. Because introducing a large number of changes, all at one time, might leave your staff overwhelmed.
