Bring a positive flow into your management

You might have heard before that people leave managers, not companies. That might be correct for some, but people also leave companies because they simply don’t like their work. In such cases, managers might not be the main reason for them quitting, but they very often don’t do enough to avoid negative situations in the first place. This can happen because there is not enough trust and honest conversations or because of bad communication.

How can it be avoided?

To answer this question, I will start by defining the role of a manager, because there are sometimes misunderstandings about what it is actually all about. To me, a manager is someone who:

• creates a comfortable workplace,
• continuously improves the working processes,
• actively listens to the team members, and
• addresses their needs and concerns.

By doing so, a manager creates a foundation for a happy, well-performing, and solid team with no tensions and misunderstandings. I call that a positive flow.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these good practices.

Creating a comfortable workplace

Companies want to grow and be successful; to achieve that, work has to be done as planned to an expected level of quality. One of the things necessary to achieve these goals is a comfortable workplace, which refers to the atmosphere, team spirit, relationships, equipment, and salary. A manager can handle these elements by reading the team’s mood and quickly reacting to any general or individual issues to remove sources of tension from the day-to-day work.

One of the signs of a comfortable workplace is when people start thinking about personal development and improving their skills. A manager should always approve such initiatives because they boost motivation and confidence, which are crucial for an employee’s satisfaction.

Continuously improving the working processes

It’s not enough to use good management practices once or twice. It has to be a continuous process that involves looking back and thinking about what can be done better next time. Even when the project is finished and the money is paid, it’s still important to be clear and transparent about what went wrong and what can be improved to avoid future issues.

Actively listening to the team members

We all have bad moments. There might be many reasons for this: a tough project, family problems, mental health, or just a bad week. These issues can affect our mood and how we work. A manager should make an effort to understand, invite team members to talk, and then listen actively; this means understanding the complete message being communicated, not just the words being said. Some people who are struggling tend to avoid voicing their problems and won’t come to the manager by themselves; they need the manager to take the first step.

A good rule is to schedule recurring one-on-one meetings from the beginning to have honest conversations; these should not be awkward events but a healthy habit that everyone is used to. Preferably, the conversations between a manager and a team member should result in action points that improve future situations.

Addressing people’s needs and concerns

When a person communicates needs or concerns, they should be the manager’s top priority. It’s easy to underestimate the importance of some requests and, therefore, postpone or ignore them, but this can be a deal breaker for building a solid, trustful relationship.

Putting it all together

At the beginning of this post, I stated that, sometimes, managers can do more to figure out the team’s negative feelings before they escalate. My solution for this is to apply the good practices described above. The first step of doing so could be to create a workflow that converts good practices into habits, a workflow that guides you during the busy days to remember important action points, notes, upcoming events, and summaries from the meetings. As a result, you will continuously improve rapport with your team members.

Introducing Bringflow

Bringflow is a web application that takes all the mentioned good practices and puts them into a framework easily adjustable to your work. It will let you efficiently follow up the conclusions after the meetings, guide you in writing summary notes, track action points, and continuously plan further meetings based on previous feedback and experiences.

My motivation for creating Bringflow was the lack of a platform for managers, that would be flexible enough to cover all different types of projects and teams. Bringflow is suitable for leaders, managers, therapists, advisors, and anyone who works with people. If you feel that the ideas mentioned in this post are close to your way of thinking, I encourage you to try the Bringflow app for free.