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W: Good afternoon and welcome to Your Business. We have in this studio today Brian Williams, head of the management unit of Lawson & Fowles Publishing. Brian is here to discuss successful staff management. Brian, what makes a good manager?
M: Well, it’s a combination of things, but at the top of the list I think I’d put being truthful. Staff have certain expectations of how they should be treated and they want their managers to be fair. Not telling your staff what’s happening is a sure way of losing their respect. You need to concentrate on solving problems, not hiding them.
W: But not all problems can be solved, can they?
M: Most can, actually, but that’s not the point. The thing is, instead of reacting after the dam-ages done, you should be talking to staff about how things are going and avoiding a situation where they come to see you about the problems after the event. The trick is to decide what problems might arise before they actually happen.
W: What about having staff work together? How should that be managed?
M: Well, some people appear to like working on their own, but in most companies, people who work on their own do so because they have been neglected. They have been given a task and their boss is not in-terested in how it is being done. This makes their sense of achievements smaller no matter how hard they work. People who work in teams have dearer overall picture of the work they are involved in. They have a role to play, and they know that if they don’t perform well, it is not only the business is going to suffer but also the other members of their team. So it is up to managers to create teams within their organization and encourage this team spirit. It raises performance.
W: How is this best done?
M: Well, it’s important to identify certain key employees among your staff and give them particular support and attention. If these key people are encouraged in their work, they would perform better themselves, and more importantly raise the general level of performance of all the others in their area.
W: Isn’t it also a question of recruitment?
M: Yes, yes, lots of difficulties in staff management arise because mangers genuinely don’t know how to select the right person. Sometimes interviewees are chosen on the basis of written personality tests which hear no relation with the work they’ll be actually doing. Many managers admit that they sometimes ignore the lack of appropriate skills in recruiting the staff. I’d say that in the vast majority of cases they simply opt for the candidates who’s made the best impression in half an hour or so...
F: So, what should we have instead?
M: Well, the selection procedure should involve matching the skills and knowledge of the applicant to the actual job. And they should be done in the most immediate and relevant way possible, for example, if you try to recruit a trainer for your company, an important part of the inter-view should involve the applicant giving a pre-pared training session. Training is what they’ll be doing, so you should see them in operation be-fore employing them.
F: That sounds sensible. The final question, Brian, is about discipline, which is perhaps the hardest factor to get it right. What is the latest thinking?
B: Umm, well, the issues are: should you be a hard, unfriendly boss, make sure everyone obey your order without a question, or should you be more sympathetic and listen to your employees’ difficulties? Then there will be time when you have to discipline someone who has done some-thing wrong. It can be difficult if you are on very friendly terms with them. So a certain distance is necessary. On the either hand, if you are too un-approachable, you may not be made aware of important problems.
M: Well, thank you, Brian. I’m sure plenty of managers out there will find out our talk very interesting.