Develop Your People Management Skills

Develop Your People Management Skills

Managing humans is like herding cats.

Like cats, humans act on their own opinion, and often, they do not do what you want them to do. But humans are more intelligent than cats. Humans can frustrate you in ways a cat could never even imagine.

In order to manage humans, then you need to use the right approach. You need to develop your people management skills.

People management skills are a set of five skills, each one of which will contribute to your ability to get the best performance from other people, both as individuals and as teams.

Take a look at the following list of five skills and ask yourself if you would benefit by developing any one of them.

1. Clear Communication Skills

You need to be able to explain your information and ideas, in such a way that the other person always understands what you mean. Miscommunication between yourself and others will cause unnecessary error, confusion, conflict and delay. Clear communication is a key skill.

2. Persuasion Skills

You may have clearly explained your point so that I understand what you mean, but I think you are wrong. So you need to add PERSUASION, to your list of skills.

In order to persuade people, you need to show that your idea is a good idea, in that it leads to benefits. You to need make mental links between your idea and BENEFITS to the listener. If the listener does not see any benefit in your information or idea they won't be motivated to act on it.

3. Motivation Skills

Even if you can prove your message holds benefits, you need to add motivation to your list of skills.

For example, most people understand they would benefit by improving their dietary habits, but most people are not sufficiently motivated to make the change. So you need to know how to motivate people to act in order to achieve the benefits.

The two major motivators are fear and desire.

You can motivate people by instilling the fear of what will happen if they don't act, (a negative motivator): and you can motivate people by making vivid the pleasures they will gain if they do act, (a positive motivator).

Your management of humans will probably mean you will have to resort to both types of motivation, but we recommend you use positive motivators, 80% of the time or more. (Don't overdose on using threats as a motivator).

4. Planning Skills

It is not enough to motivate people to act. They need to know exactly how to act. What to do. How to do it. When to do it. with what tools. By when.

You need to demonstrate you have a practical plan of action.

Failure to plan is the most common cause of failure for individuals, teams, organisations and even whole nations. You need to develop excellent planning skills, if you are to manage others.

People love to know the plan. If there is no coherent plan, then don't expect much buy-in to your grand scheme.

Remember, a goal with no plan is a fantasy. But, a goal tied to a practical plan is a powerful force. They need to know the way forwards.

5. Appreciation and Praise

In order to manage people, you need to manage their emotions, as well as their minds; Their heart, as well as their head.

And the best way to do that is to give honest appreciation and praise.

Whenever someone does something good, or right, or well, then give them verbal praise and appreciation.

Don't neglect to give appreciation to all those who have earned the right to expect it.

If you don't appreciate what she has done for you, you will offend her.

If you don't appreciate how much effort he put into it, you will lose his commitment.

If you don't appreciate the time they put into the task, even if it was not successful, then you will demotivate the team for the next attempt.

You must, must, must, give people the appreciation and praise they have earned.

Almost everyone needs to be appreciated, and loved, and liked.

And if you want to get the best from people, then you need to appreciate, love and like people.

Simple.

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