Published on December 11, 2021

When I joined my current organization more than ten years ago, I had to deal with a family emergency after 6 months of joining. My then manager and now close friend provided me strong support and ease during this time. This helped me decide priorities and focus in work and personal aspects with flexibility. As a result, all the deliverables were well managed, and the tough time passed by!

Now when I am managing big teams, I always remember the strong, positive, and long-term impact of this way of managing.

Great managers make themselves great leaders and influencers.

If you are a manager in real sense, your first job is to care for your team members. This caring comes in variety of segments. Caring your team members is about helping them solving the technical issue they are stuck up in. Caring is about making sure they understand the impact of what they are delivering and the value they are going bring to the customer and the organization. Caring is about setting up the right process for them which helps them work more efficiently and does not overall or deviate from the objective. Caring is about creating a healthy and joyful environment within the team. Caring is about identifying laggers, wrongly influencing factors, conflicts and resolve them competently and not delaying or ignoring them.

Caring is about leading fearlessly. Caring is about providing mentorship. Caring is about lifting others. Caring is about identifying key strengths of your teammates, helping them define their stretch goals in those directions and help them shine through. Caring is about identifying their weaknesses and work towards overcoming those. There are numerous examples where managers have transformed their mentees’ weaknesses into great strengths with their mentorship skills. Remember that the best way of growing yourself is to help people around you grow!

Caring is about listening. Listen and understand your teams’, your clients’, and organization’s expectations from you and your team and come up with jointly agreed approach of the objective you are trying to achieve.

Caring is about correcting mistakes in clear and firm way without making the other person feel offended. Remember that you are the manager of your team, working to achieve a goal and continuously thrive to do better. Nothing is personal and nothing should be sugarcoated; but shouldn’t be insulted too! Self-respect is equally weighed for the newest and the least experienced team member of your team, just as for you!

Caring is about decision making. You work a lot with your colleague or a team member for improvements. After trying different tactics, if nothing works out, try to find a different role or team. Do a honest and healthy conversation with her and take the right decision at the right time.

Caring is about giving comfort. Your team members are spending maximum amount of their time with you. Everyone is dealing with different challenges in their lives. Support them in their challenging times. And they will thrive in gratitude!

And lastly, caring is about celebrating! Give them pat on the back, share success, give credit, acknowledge small to big impacts, have fun, and keep your team energized!  

(Image credit: sasint from pixabay.com)