8 Stealworthy Management Tips and Templates

As Henry Mintzberg, Canadian academic and author on business and management, put it, “Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.” While clearly, a lot goes into successful management, sometimes all you need to help you move forward is a quick tip or an editable template.

This is why we’ve compiled a list of management tips, tricks, tools, and templates for you. These resources come from our most popular blogs, guides, and toolkits over the last few years.

8 Management Tips Worth Stealing

1. Don’t Neglect the Power of Prioritization
2. Play To Your Leadership Strengths
3. Make the Most of Meetings
4. Inspire and Align with a Vision
5. Don’t Run Away from Conflict
6. Use Praise and Recognition Freely
7. Lead Yourself First
8. Make Bringing Out the Best in Others a Priority

Don’t Neglect the Power of Prioritization

When you’re in management, everyone is vying for your time. However, if you continually jump at the latest request, you may not be able to get it all done, miss deadlines, cause undue stress for your team, and move your focus away from the activities that will move you closer to your goals.

To feel more comfortable saying no to tasks, you’ll want to reorganize your current to-do list using the task priority matrix template. This will give you a clear picture of the important and urgent tasks you must complete first.

Play to Your Leadership Strengths

Everyone has a particular leadership style they naturally gravitate towards, and each has its strengths you can tap into when you understand your approach to leadership. It’s imperative to know your approach to leading your team, as it has been found that self-awareness is the most important capability for leaders.

So, how do you lead your team? Take the short leadership styles quiz to learn your style, and read The Leadership Styles Handbook to uncover your strengths and drawbacks to become a more self-aware leader.

Make the Most of Meetings

Meetings can be a time sink for you and your team. You’ll need to maximize their impact to make the most of them. When done well, team or staff meetings can make all the difference in team alignment, goal attainment, and morale.

To level up your meetings, send out a survey before your next time together as a team. Not only will you receive valuable feedback from your team on what they’d like to get out of the meeting, but you’ll also make them feel like they have a say and be involved in making the most of team meetings. To help you, here are some meeting survey questions and step-by-step instructions for creating your pre-meeting survey.

Inspire and Align with a Vision

A team vision gives purpose, direction, and meaning to why you do what you do, your decisions, and your goals. It gives your team a roadmap of the destination or end goal you’re trying to achieve together. A powerful vision can be invaluable in inspiring and aligning your team.

A great piece of management advice is taking your team vision one step further using the team alignment worksheet. Use this template as a team activity where you break down the critical success factors, such as goals, milestones, and values you’ll need to achieve your vision.

Don’t Run Away from Conflict 

Those in management often want to stop a conflict between team members in an attempt to maintain team cohesion. However, this may be a mistake, as it was found that when conflict is approached well, it leads to innovation, problem-solving, increased learning and growth, improved relationships, and higher job satisfaction.

The key differentiator of whether the conflict is positive or negative is how individuals approach conflict at work, which comes down to self-awareness. To better understand how you and your team approach conflict, have everyone take this conflict styles quiz and share your results with each other. With a greater understanding of your own and others' conflict styles, your team will be able to capitalize on the benefits disagreements can bring.

Use Praise and Recognition Freely

The value of praise and recognition from one’s leader cannot be overstated. Our advice for those in management is to give it freely and frequently, as it inspires those around you to work harder as their efforts are recognized and appreciated. Here are a few management tips and tricks for incorporating more praise and recognition into your leadership. 

1. Promote peer-to-peer praise: At your next team meeting, start with peer-to-peer shout-outs where team members recognize each other for their achievements. One study on peer-to-peer recognition uncovered that for every 10% increase in employees reporting being recognized, they saw a 3% increase in retention and a 2% increase in engagement.
2. Simply say thank you: Stop and acknowledge employees at the moment with a simple thank you can go a long way, as it was found that 75% of respondents agreed that if their management thanked them in real-time, their motivation and morale would improve.
3. Host a team event: Whether it is a team-building event, a potluck, or a Zoom happy hour, getting your team together for the sheer fact of celebrating is another way to ensure you demonstrate your gratitude for all they do.

Lead Yourself First

An essential piece of advice for management is you have to be able to lead yourself first to be a great leader. If you don't do it yourself, you can’t coach and develop your people to be great at goal setting, organization, time management, or demonstrating accountability. Do as I say, not as I do, does not work in management.

Employees will look to their direct manager to understand how to behave and what’s expected of them. That’s why it is critically important to develop self-management skills. Focusing on these seven skills will enable you to lead yourself first, so you can effectively lead others.

The team at The Niagara Institute created a comprehensive workbook to help you attain the seven self-management skills you’ll need to lead yourself. For each skill, you also find a tool, template, or assessment that can be used in your day-to-day life to manage yourself more effectively.

Make Bringing Out the Best in Others a Priority

With deadlines looming, client needs to be met, and corporate goals to be achieved, those in management can lose sight of their most critical role - bringing out the best in others. Forgoing coaching, feedback, and performance improvement for the immediate urgency of work have long-term implications for the development of individuals and your team’s success. The greatest gift a manager can give is passing on their strengths to others, and it must be a top priority to do so.

Try following the step-by-step performance management cycle to make the process less demanding and ensure it stays top of mind. It outlines the steps to take against an annual timeline. Be ready for your performance and coaching conversations by equipping yourself with performance management templates that are included in the Performance Management Toolkit.