When you’re running a business, the most challenging thing you have to deal with is managing people. Your direct responsibilities are within your personal control but if you can’t delegate with confidence to a trusted team and, eventually to a wider business, you’ll find yourself in trouble: overworked, overstressed and surrounded by workers who know you don’t trust them.

Becoming a confident, competent manager is a vital skill to practise to make your business life not just effective and successful, but bearable. Today we’ve got some vital tips to keep things running smoothly.

Communication

One of the most important tools in your arsenal is a set of great communication skills. You need to match how you speak with the people you’re managing to their personality: what might stimulate one person to new heights of commitment could have another looking for a new job so be sensitive to your employees needs and how they’re motivated.

If you’re communicating a lot by email, you might find it begins to become less effective: if you send a flurry of ‘important’ emails every day, the impact of each individual one is reduced. Take the time to reflect, and try to stick with one ‘briefing’ email that covers all your important points for the widest possible audience, with follow ups more specifically targeted at the person or department they affect.

If you really need to make an impact, try taking people out of their usual environment. If you’ve got a special project to work on or need to convey that your news really means changes, get them out of the office. That stops the meeting blending mentally with other meetings in the same setting: it will stand out as important in their memories. If you’re looking for meeting room hire Manchester, London, and the other great ‘hub cities’ of the UK have plenty of options to meet your needs, whatever they may be.

Rewards

If you’re setting difficult tasks for your team it’s important to have proportionate rewards: that’s the difference between people burning the midnight oil to get the job done and falling into resentment. As with communication, it needs to be fitted to the individual. While many people might be well motivated with a healthy bonus structure that encourages chasing targets, that doesn’t fit everyone. Some might be more enticed by additional time off, or a flexible working compromise. Spending resources on rewards that don’t actually motivate people is a waste twice over, so being thoughtful about what your people actually want is a vital exercise.