People Management Skills for IT-Jobs

Career AdviceCareer

As a manager, it's important to learn how to be better at your job so you can foster a more motivated and productive workplace.

Mediation

Conflicts in the workplace are common, but can be managed to create an environment where all employees feel valued. Strong people managers take an active role in mediating conflicts before they reach a point where they become insurmountable, and look to incorporate every employees’ point-of-view when creating a path forward, setting a culture that incorporates understanding, representation and accountability.

Building Trust

A productive work environment requires a sense of camaraderie from the top down, but gaining the trust of individual employees requires action. People managers must be capable of listening to and fully understanding an employee’s goals, ambitions and work habits to be able to bring out the most of their abilities. By practicing patience and flexibility when employees are facing blockers, people managers will build a far-more engaged and participatory team.

Listening

If you want to be a good people manager, you need to be able to communicate expectations clearly, while also being understanding and helpful. If you want to be a successful people manager, you need to learn to actively listen, maintaining eye contact, giving verbal cues and asking questions to show that you are engaged with what the employee is trying to communicate with you about. Only by active listening, genuine empathy and taking actionable steps can you hope to create a workplace where employees feel validated and respected.

Setting Knowledge

Good data is essential to success in any organization. It allows you to track project, company and employee performance so you can see what's working and what needs to be changed. Showing that you are always learning new things is a great way to prove to your team that you are self-aware and always looking to improve your skills.

Organization

Being able to stay on top of routine tasks and emerging challenges, or constantly needing to catch-up and letting ongoing responsibilities slide to tackle emerging tasks, is something that will be recognized and resonate throughout a team. Great people managers actively look for ways to streamline processes, reduce clutter and accomplish tasks before they pile up while paying attention to employee workloads and making adjustments where they are needed. Employees should have access to the resources they need to stay organized from the moment they are onboarded.