Manage Work, Don’t let it Manage you

When you become a manager, it isn’t just your job title and responsibilities that change. Your idea of work and your identity evolve too. The nature of your work changes when you go from an individual contributor to a manager. As an individual, you focused on your contribution to the team. As a manager, you have to set the direction for your team and coordinate resources to achieve business goals. As you adapt to this new way of working, there are several skills you need to acquire to manage work more effectively.

How can you manage work and don’t let it manage you?

One of the first things you do as a manager is to put together a new team or inherit an existing team. Whether your team is a project-based or functional one, you face a common set of opportunities and challenges that comes with bringing together unique individuals in the workplace. You are uniting people of different backgrounds, skills sets and different points of views and these differences are exactly why teams have the potential to achieve impressive outcomes. As the leader of the group, you need to ensure that your team is a right mix of competencies to achieve business objectives. In addition, you need to create a work environment that allows your people to contribute fully and bring their talents and abilities to bear on the work itself. There is bound to be conflict when people work together, therefore it is important to build strong relationships on the team to produce better work and deliver shared results.

Another highly valued skill that will help you achieve superior results at work is negotiating. Negotiating a salary offer after being offered a job, negotiating a flexible work schedule or negotiating a contract with external vendors are some situations where our negotiation skills (or lack thereof) are needed. It is important to understand the issues and interests of the other party before you start to negotiate. Negotiators come to the table because they need something from one another, so you must identify the other party’s main interests. What are the deal breakers and which may be the ones they are willing to concede? Your success in negotiation depends largely on the quality of your preparation. Think about your position and your objectives. Having clear and smart goals will protect you from making too many concessions and motivate you to perform better.

Negotiations do not always conclude with an agreement by both parties. There are times when we may encounter deadlocks or impasse during the process. What do you do in such situations? Do you leave the negotiating table, concluding that the talks have failed? Or do you encourage yourself and the rest of the team to remain at the table and keep negotiations talking from another perspective? Skilled and experienced negotiators expect that there will be impasses during the negotiating process. They do not give up easily in their attempts to reach an agreement. There are some strategies that can help when you find yourself in an impasse. As you seek to navigate this tricky stage in the process, remember to take time out to cool down. This step will help you defuse the situation and you can resume the talks at a later time. Consider that the purpose of negotiation is not to win an argument but to find a satisfactory solution that would maximise the benefits for both parties.

Furthermore, being successful in negotiation also requires you to be effective at persuasion. How often have you needed to persuade others to do something at work?As you attempt to influence the other party, it is important to identify moments of power and take advantage of them. Experienced negotiators know how to use a range of techniques that take advantage of the natural responses of negotiators to certain types of information. For instance, making small unilateral concessions can be an effective way to influence the other party. Negotiators feel obligated to reciprocate, no matter how big or small the concessions are. Persuasions skills can be learned on the job and they are key to being able to influence others to achieve your goals and objectives.

When you have specific problems to solve, trying out new tools and techniques to generate new ideas can bring out the creativity in your team. Creativity is the ability to generate novel ideas or better ways to execute internal processes or unexpected solutions in a deadlock situation. Creativity doesn’t just come from “creative” people. Enhancing team creativity is a goal-oriented and collaborative process that draws on each team member’s expertise, experience and skills. Maybe you are trying to come up with a new name for a product or you are trying to envision new possibilities for a business model. Organizing a brainstorming session is not your only option. When you plan how you facilitate your creative session, think about the time, space and rules to ensure that participants are focused and productive. While successful ideas generating sessions seem spontaneous, they actually have a lot of structure to it. Create a safe and supportive environment to help everyone perform at their best in work. Who knows, your next big idea could actually propel the business to the next level?