How Good Are Your People Management Skills?
People management is easy, right? Wrong...
We’re all people who have been interacting with other people throughout our lives. Given this, you’d think that people management skills would come naturally enough.
The truth is that most managers find managing people a real challenge. If you’re finding this element of management difficult, you are not alone.
People management skills are often classed as a “soft skill” in business. In this case, "soft skill" is a misleading term. We regularly hear that people find this one of the trickiest areas of their management, supervisory, or team lead role.
This is probably why the QQI Certified - Managing People Course is one of our most popular programmes!
Fast-Track Your People Management Skills
Gain an effective, versatile people management toolkit through our popular, 3-day QQI People Management Course.
You can get access to information about our People Management Course by instantly downloading our PDF brochure.
In This Article:
People Management Skills: Are you getting it right?
This can be a tricky question to answer.
Rather than sending a questionnaire around your workplace for ratings on your people management, the best starting point is asking yourself if you find it easy to work with others.
How to accurately answer the question: “Do you find it easy to work with others?”
Do you find that many of your day-to-day obstacles involve dealing with others?
Everyone faces obstacles in their working life, but there is a difference between difficulties arising from a situation and difficulties arising from your interaction with other team members.
For example, let’s imagine you are managing or leading a team that is working on a way to make handling customer queries more efficient.
If the project issues are mostly related to resources and information available to you and your team, or bridging a gap in the current process, then your challenges are situational.
If however, the project obstacles involve miscommunication, conflict, low morale, or low engagement within your team, or between you and your team, the challenges are people management orientated.
Do You Face These 5 Common People Management Challenges?
Take a moment to apply this kind of thinking to your team and environment. Are you facing any of the following challenges?
Low team morale:
An un-enthusiastic approach to new projects, team dicussions, or problem-solving.Lack of communication:
Team members don’t let you know what they’re up to, or if they have encountered a roadblock to productivity.Miscommunication:
Getting garbled, insufficient, or simply wrong information about progress or a situation can cause confusion.Low productivity:
You'll notice this when things just aren’t getting done. Conflict:
This could be either within the team or involving you.
If any of the above sounds familiar, you’ll find the following tips and strategies will help improve your working day. They may even transform how you and your team work together!
6 Steps You Can Take Today
Step 1: Begin with Yourself
When you’re facing interpersonal challenges in any workplace, it can be so tempting to play the blame game - “he’s causing the conflict”, “she doesn’t communicate”, “they aren’t delivering on tasks”, and so on.
If you’re recognising your own voice in those statements, don’t worry. We all do it!
Truly, the most effective catalyst for change is evaluating and modifying our own behaviour.
As the famous 13th century scholar, Rumi states “yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself”.
Step 2: Evaluate Your Behaviour
Begin by noticing how you interact within daily situations. Keep reflecting on your own words and actions as we go through these steps and as you go about your day.
You may be surprised at what you notice. Perhaps you’re already doing a lot of things really well. Maybe you can identify and resolve some gaps immediately.
You might even gain some ideas and insight into how to improve the team overall when you look at how you respond in situations, and how certain behaviours affect you.
Step 3: Communication is Key
After awareness and consideration, communication is perhaps the most important element in successful people management.
This includes clarity in how you communicate, tactfulness and use of correct language, ability to ask the right question, and - often disregarded - active listening skills.
Step 4: Avoid Becoming a “Conflict Ostrich”
When it comes to conflict within your team, or between you and members of your team, sticking your head in the sand will only make it worse.
Addressing conflict is never anyone’s favourite task, but avoiding it just amplifies the problem and spreads the damage.
Work on developing some conflict resolution skills and have a strategy ready for handling conflict early and efficiently.
Step 5: Be a Cheerleader!
You may have heard about the “carrot and stick” motivation theory, where the “carrot” represents reward, and the “stick” represents punishment.
Honestly, there are very few people who work well with the “stick” part of this theory. People respond best to encouragement and acknowledgement.
This is not to say we should give false praise. It’s about building up people’s confidence in their own ability by communicating your faith in their capability. It’s also about giving the “carrot”, the praise and recognition when they contribute valuable work.
Step 6: Develop your Skills as a People Manager
The best way to develop your confidence and solid skills is by attending a people management skills course that addresses what you want to achieve.
We recommend diving in with our QQI Certified - Managing People Course.
Over 3 days, this course focuses on ways you can lead and manage others with ease. Content includes communication skills, team building exercises, handling conflict and low morale, and performance management.
The Best Way to Build Reliable People Management Skills
If you’re ready to get started on improving your people management skills, training is the best place to begin.
Through completing our 3-day People Management Course online, you will:
- gain a flexible, reliable set of people management skills to support you in any situation.
- benefit from the guidance and feedback of our experienced management trainers.
- achieve a respected, QQI Level 6 certification in People Management.
Find out More
Get full details about our QQI People Management Course instantly by downloading our PDF brochure.
Alternatively, you can:
- Visit the QQI People Management page for upcoming dates and more details.
- Use the button below to ask a question about this course or your training needs.
- Call our consultants at Freephone 1800 910 810 or Dublin 01 816 0700 for advice on your training options.
