How to Be a Great Boss - 4 Tips

Do you think you're a great boss or manager? Are you good at rallying your troops and getting them on board with new ideas? Or do they run for the hills? Here are 4 proven useful tips to make you a great boss.

1. They ask a lot of questions

Great bosses constantly ask their employees questions, to get them thinking more and help them and the business grow. While experience has value, people can't learn when that wisdom is presented on a platter or forced down their throat. That's why great bosses ask questions that will spark, in the employee's own mind, the thought processes that will make that employee successful.

2. They are mavericks

When managers depend upon their "common sense" to solve problems, they seldom assess whether their hunches actually paid off. As a result, the same problems keep cropping up month after month, year after year. Great managers think outside the box and break the rules to get results. Great bosses also know their employees and their employee's interests, and manage according to those interests. In other words, getting the best from your team requires applied psychology rather than common sense.

3. They don't manage the bottom line.

The "bottom line"–your quarterly or yearly numbers–only tells the story of what's happened in the past and to manage by it is like looking at last year's holiday snaps before deciding where to book your holiday this year. It tells you what has happened – but not what is going to happen in the future. Really great bosses know that the only way to get good numbers in the future is to keep your attention on what's going on right now in your market and industry and the activities that your employees are undertaking to take advantage of the present reality. What are they doing right now which will get results?

4. Great bosses put the employees first (even before the client)

When managers preach and practice the longstanding theory to put the customer first, they overlook their employees, who are the people actually responsible for creating and nurturing the customer experience.

Customers can immediately sense when the employees of the firms from which they buy are miserable, overworked, or under trained. When's the last time you walked into a shop to overhear staff moaning and looking stressed out? It's not a comfortable environment. Truly great bosses concentrate on making certain that their employees are happy, healthy and can do the work.