What makes a Good Boss?
Google has been studying its own management team, and together with customer satisfaction surveys, has come up with the 10 top attributes of a good boss. How do these compare to your notion of what makes a good manager?
- A good coach: one who helps employees through problems and uses them as valuable learning points.
- Empowers the team, rather than micromanaging, by letting you use your skills instead of trying to do everything for you, or watch over your every move.
- Creates an inclusive team environment, where people are encouraged to introduce new ideas, and success and well-being are encouraged.
- Productive and results focussed: a good boss helps out when necessary, and ensures the team know what their group and individual goals are.
- A good communicator – this is both sharing information to the team, and good at listening too.
- Supports career development, including discussing performance. This is best achieved using feedback to help the employee work towards their goals.
- Has a clear strategy for the team: so the individuals in the team know what is expected of them, and what you need to do to get there.
- Has technical skills needed to advise the team. Your boss should at least have an understanding of the tasks they are asking the team to undertake.
- Collaborates across the organisation, by having good relationships with other members of the organisation outside of the immediate team.
- Is a strong decision maker, able to take informed decisions rather than constantly prevaricating or avoiding decisions.
As an employee, how does your boss score against these factors? And if you are a boss, can you honestly claim all 10? And what would your employees rate you as?
We are also interested in what other attributes you think makes a good boss – tell us over on our Facebook page here.