Hello, this is Katie. I work as a Project Manager in Kansas City.
I had an amazing year, and I celebrated the end of it with my boyfriend and family. And what is awaiting?
I’m doing well…
If you followed my diary last year, you probably know that my life went through a lot of major changes. I started working as a Project Manager for the first time, I moved to a new apartment, I started managing a team, managed to satisfy a lot of clients, and I met my boyfriend Ted. I’m truly grateful for all the new challenges 2018 had for me.
But I am ready to do better!
However, there’s always room for improvement. Despite saying I don’t do resolutions, I gave myself one after all – I will be a better manager to my team! I think I am doing my job pretty well, but sometimes it’s challenging to keep an eye on everybody, find balance between motivating them, and not being too bossy while still performing my original job, which is taking care of my clients.
Learning
I thought about my management skills and decided I want to improve them. I went to my boss, Margaret, who was supportive and understanding as always.
“You are doing a great job, Katie!” she assured me first. “However, what you say sounds beneficial for the whole company. If you wish to improve your management skills, I will prepare a Management training. ”
Well, I’ve always loved my boss!
The training was an all-day thing for all managers in our company. “There are eight main points I would like you to adopt,” said Margaret at the beginning.
We learned that managing a team requires time. I realized I always put my clients first and managing the team was always a bit of an afterthought for me. I made a decision to divide my time at least 60 – 40. 60% goes to my hands-on tasks. The rest? For the team!
You may be asking – why do you need so much time for team management? You simply tell them what to do and then correct them if they don’t do it. But that’s not how it should work.
According to Margaret, it is a must to get to know your team. No need for getting too personal, but you need to show interest and analyze your team members a little bit in order to be a good boss. You should also constantly communicate with them. It often happens that people are unsure about what to do and how. This is clearly a communication problem. Bosses and managers simply tend to forget they are the only ones familiar with all details.
There was much more, but two final points I would personally emphasize were:
- Don’t procrastinate
- Delegate
Thinking about these, I was grateful for eWay-CRM which has been helping me with organization and delegation since I started working in this position. Margaret also spent some time in the end emphasizing the importance of using GTD inside of eWay-CRM. But we already talked about that here so I won’t repeat myself!
Well, I definitely have a lot to think about until next time! Let’s see how all this theory applies to my team!
Yours,
Katie
