Fast Company Features Phil Wilson: 6 Signs You’re Management Material

Fast Company Features Phil Wilson: 6 Signs You’re Management Material

Fast Company published an article last week detailing what makes a person “management material.”

After consulting a number of experts, they came up with these 6 traits:

  1. You’re good at building relationships. “You cannot be a leader unless people are willing to follow you…To have followers, you need to be skilled at developing and maintaining relationships.”
  2. You’re approachable. “Employees of approachable bosses are less likely to quit and more likely to engage in “above-and-beyond” behavior at work…If you’re approachable you’ll be a successful leader. If you’re unapproachable over the long run you will fail.”
  3. You look at the big picture. “To manage, you need to be able to see the big picture; how pieces of the organization fit together, and how a change in one area will affect another.”
  4. You think strategically. “You should understand the environment inside and outside of the organization…You need skills in problem identification and analysis, and must be able to generate and evaluate solutions.”
  5. You can check your ego at the door. “Focusing on leaving behind a better team than you found is important, but the leader needs to be comfortable with letting other people shine for this to work.”
  6. You have a proven track record of results. “When credibility, competence, and aspiration are all evident, the odds of the person successfully transitioning from an individual contributor into a management are greatly increased.”

We’ll let you guess which piece of advice was ours.

Do you have anything to add to this list? Or tips to help people develop these qualities? We’d love for you to share them with us!

CUE Organization on Approachable Leadership

CUE Organization on Approachable Leadership

After Phil gave CUE’s Fall 2015 Conference attendees a taste of approachability with the Approachable Leadership Workshop, the employee relations organization is officially a believer!

Click here to read CUE, Inc.’s shoutout to Phil or here if you are interested in attending the next AL Workshop (scheduled February 23rd and 24th in Tulsa and OKC).

Phil Wilson Quoted on Approachability and Retention

Phil Wilson Quoted on Approachability and Retention

The Daily Independent of Ridgecrest, CA, reached out to Phil this week to discuss the problem of employee retention.

The problem was summarized by a quote from Andre Lavoie, CEO of talent management firm ClearCompany:

“With so many employees looking to leave their current position for one that better suits their needs, it’s clear that employers aren’t taking enough time to get to know individual employee needs, interests and goals.”

Phil provided additional clarity:

“Retention is always a challenge, but the simple fact is that employees don’t leave companies – they leave managers,” said Wilson, explaining that if an organization is experiencing a high turnover rate, it is likely that their leadership team is failing in one way or another.

“More often than not, that failure can be pinpointed to one area — employee engagement,” Wilson said. “Disengaged employees feel unappreciated, and even worse, not respected.

“Most people know what they are capable of and they know when their leaders don’t acknowledge it,” he adds. “Nobody wants to spend 40 hours a week in that kind of environment – and they shouldn’t.”

Wilson described the key to improving engagement and thus retention as being the approachability of the leader.

Phil on Approachability Concepts in MainSt.com Article

Phil on Approachability Concepts in MainSt.com Article

In MainSt.com’s May 4th article titled, “7 Things You Don’t Realize You’re Doing That Demotivate Your Team,” Phil addressed the tendency for managers to “over manage” their employees, attempting to find external ways to motivate them. “That’s just not the way it works,” Wilson says. “People are motivated for their own reasons. The manager’s job is to create an environment where this internal motivation can express itself naturally.”

Check out the article to read Phil’s recommendations for how to effectively motivate your team.

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