Managing the manager

Being the manager or leader in a business is a lot of pressure. You have to direct others, and help them reach their full potential and advance the company toward its goals. However, you also have to manage yourself. The following are a few tips for how to not only help employees reach their potential through management, but help mange the manager as well.

1. Know your own skills. A good manager is aware of what they are good at. They know their strengths and weaknesses. If you do not know your skills, how can you use them to your advantage? It is called leverage. You have to be able to leverage the things you do well against the things that you don't so that your overall results are success. Be self-tuned enough to know a strength (and not a strength) when you see one.
2. Use your skills effectively. Once you have ferreted out your unique skill set, it is time to put your skills to work. Skills not used effectively are wasted. If you are a great people person, but use technology for all of your communications, you are not effectively using a skill that might really benefit and inspire.
3. Nurture your strengths. Make your strengths even stronger. As you put them to good use, you can help them grow and strengthen. This is key to being a good manager, and helping your employees grow as well.
4. Focus on winning. If you focus on the negative aspects (which there will always be some), you will not achieve success. You have to focus on the positive outcomes, and on winning. That way you can take something from your losses and move forward.
5. Help others feel significant. One of the most important roles of managing others is making them feel significant and important. It is easy in a position of power to make those under you feel little. Instead, take the time to help them see how integral and important they are to the company.
6. Look at mistakes as opportunity for feedback and growth, not failure. Mistakes happen, setbacks occur. A manager worth their salt will take the mistakes, learn from them, and move on. They will use them as opportunities to see areas that need strengthening, and to reevaluate how they will manage things in the future.
7. Create a sense of community. Set goals that enable employees to learn, to grow, and to become more. Foster a sense of trust and an environment of security so that you and your employees are working together toward the same things, and not opposing each other, or getting in one another's way. As you learn to do this, you will find that working toward the same vision, and creating a sense of community automatically eliminates many potential problems.
Influence, attract, and energize people to get excited about the vision you create, and want to work hard to help that vision come to fruition.