HOW TO BE AN Effective Manager

A Basic Guide to Maximizing Employee Morale, Motivation, and Productivity

Greg Blencoe

CHAPTER ONE

Surround Yourself with High Quality Employees

The first rule of management is to surround yourself with high quality employees. The talent level of your personnel will have a major impact on how successful you are as a manager.

Who surrounds you?

Managers must delegate tasks and responsibilities because one person can only do so much. The question is: to whom will you be delegating? Will you be delegating to someone who is hardworking or lazy, polite or rude, organized or unorganized, competent or inept? The answers to these questions will go a long way in determining how well you perform as a manager.

The bottom line is that you had better surround yourself with talented people or you are not going to accomplish much. After all, how good would the greatest choreographer be if his dancers had two left feet? How good would the greatest football coach be if his quarterback couldn’t throw, his receivers couldn’t catch, and his offensive line couldn’t block? How good would the greatest movie director be if he did not have great actors, great screenwriters, and great cinematographers?

In addition, synergy is created when a group of high quality employees work together. The standard of what is expected from each other is raised by subtle peer pressure. As a result, a culture of excellence is created and sustained.

The problem is that the same thing happens on the flip side of the coin. High performing employees caught in a mediocre organization will adapt to their environment and become much less productive than they would have otherwise been under normal circumstances. So, what is it going to be: esprit de corps or esprit de bore?

“What if I can’t afford to locate and hire high quality employees?”

You might say “But the cost to land high quality employees can be high and I just can’t afford to invest the time and money that it will take to obtain them.” The truth is, you can’t afford not to. For a product to succeed, customers demand that it be consistently excellent. At the end of the day, the quality of your product is going to determine the success of your business, and your employees play a major role in determining that level of quality. An ironclad principle of business is that if you tolerate mediocre employees, then you are tolerating giving your customers a mediocre product. Therefore, it is unacceptable to have an “OK” or “decent” or “so-so” group of employees unless you find it acceptable to give your customers an “OK” or “decent” or “so-so” product.

The extra cost and effort needed to lure a high quality employee to your company is actually little compared to all of the indirect expenses that will accrue as a result of having a mediocre employee. What is the cost if an employee can’t get along with others? What is the cost if an employee doesn’t show up to work on a consistent basis? What is the cost if an employee doesn’t treat customers well? What is the cost if you have to correct his mistakes all the time? What is the cost if an employee quits soon after he is hired? Therefore, you can either invest a little more time and money now for a good employee or pay a lot later for a bad one.

“Where do I find high quality employees?”

Continued in PDF