The role of a boss in modern business is more multi-faceted than it has been in the past. A good boss isn’t just there to oversee things and delegate the work, they are also a valuable resource for the workers who work beneath them. The best bosses are those that want to help their workers to achieve everything they are capable of and are willing to put some serious effort in to supporting them.
Any boss can be a proactive force in their workers’ lives and help them to reach their full potential; all it takes is a sincere desire to see all of your workers succeed. Here are four simple ways that any manager or business owner can help their workers reach higher and higher until they make it to the top of their game.
Encourage and Nurture Individuality
If you want to get the most out of any individual worker, then you need to show them that they are a valued and important part of the team. Everyone is different, and while many of your workers will be performing the same functions and roles within your business, they will all bring their own individual personality into the mix. Acknowledging this individuality as a positive thing is a good start, but you should also aim to nurture it and, more importantly, teach your workers how they can nurture their own individuality.
Helping workers to appreciate the value of their individuality will encourage them to be more confident, to speak up, and to express themselves without fear. All too often in corporate settings do we so vehemently drill the importance of being a team player into our workers’ skulls that it is unsurprising they come to subconsciously view individuality as being a negative. As a general rule of thumb, the more rigid a business is in its approach to emphasising the importance of being a team player, the less encouraging an environment it is for individual workers.
In actual fact, you can nurture the individuality of your workers while simultaneously helping them to understand how their individual approach can best fit in with that of the rest of your team. The more self-aware your workers are, the easier they will find it to not only put themselves forward when they think they have something to offer, but also to know when to take a step back and let another individual on the team take the lead.
Provide Access to Training and Self-Improvement Resources for Workers
Some workers will be required to undertake training as part of their professional duties. However, any worker in any industry can take on new training and learning opportunities to improve their existing skills, learn new ones, and enhance their value to any potential employers in the future. Of course, workers are always free to pursue these opportunities of their own volition, but it will obviously make a big difference to them if you are actively encouraging them to pursue these opportunities.
In fact, you can go beyond just encouraging your workers to undertake new training and learning opportunities and actually provide them with the training directly. If you don’t have the resources to bring that training in-house and administer it yourself, you can still help to facilitate your workers’ access to training resources and allow them to take time out of their workday to pursue it.
For example, findcourses.co.uk makes it easy to search for courses and training programs relevant to just about any industry or discipline you could think of. If your workers need to undertake IPAF approved training, go here for more information on the IPAF courses available. You can then find the most suitable option for your workers and help to book them a place on the course.
You can also offer your employees courses that, while not essential to the work that they do, will enable them to improve themselves and increase their value. Showing a willingness to assist your employees in their efforts to improve themselves will help to build loyalty and establish a lasting connection between them and your business.
Consider the Team and the Individual
We touched earlier on the importance of helping your workers to identify their own individual skills and traits, as well as helping them to view their individuality as a strength. However, you can’t just nurture one side of your workers, you need to encourage them to not only recognise and build upon their individual strengths, but to also carefully consider how their individual strengths fit in to the larger team picture.
The best teams are comprised of strong individuals, whether it’s in business, in sport, or in any other arena. So, it is important that you give your workers attention as individuals. However, while you are helping them to identify and build on their individuality, keep coming back to how their personal skills can best combine with those of other individuals on your team. If you can identify any pairs or groups of workers whose skills complement one another, encourage them to work together as much as possible.
Many business managers end up banging their head against a wall trying to get their workers to perform properly as a team. Sometimes the best way of overcoming teamwork issues is to break your team down into individuals and then slowly piece it back together. As mentioned, start by pairing up the workers who you know will perform well together and then slowly add in the rest of your workforce until you have them all behaving as a single cohesive unit.
If you want your workers to reach their full potential, then you need to help them to master their role as both an individual and a member of a larger team.
Always Keep Your Door Open
In order to help your employees to reach their full potential, you need to be there to support them when they need it. To this end, you should make sure that they know that your door is always open and they can come and speak to you whenever they need advice or guidance. This won’t just make you a more approachable boss, but it will also help to improve your productivity by solving any bumps in the road as you come to them.
You will also find that your employees are more confident and more willing to take risks if you are more open with them. When the boss creates a clear separation between them and their workers, their workers are going to be hesitant to cross that divide. This means they are less likely to seek advice and guidance and are more likely to worry about the potential to upset their boss. An open-door policy makes you more approachable and makes your workers worry less about asking you for help.
These are just a small selection of the many ways that you can make a genuine difference to your workers’ lives. Once your workers see that you really do care about their successes and want to see them achieve everything that they are capable of, it will serve as a very powerful motivation for them. The more approachable they find you, the more likely they are to work with you on improving their skills.
