Read about the ideas and principles of people management, look at some of the key terms from the article then test your comprehension of it. Practise your grammar with an exercise on the first conditional form.
People management: don’t worry, it’s not another concept invented by business consultants, or the title of yet another book, or the new name for the human resources department. Quite simply, “people management” is what management is.
To put it more clearly: any kind of management is people management. If you are the CEO of a multinational company, or a middle manager in a small enterprise, or a member of a local co-operative, or even if you work freelance, you will be dealing with people – people who work for you, or who work with you, or who are your clients and customers. Even the most dedicated accountant who sits in front of a computer screen all day staring at numbers on an excel spreadsheet has some kind of contact with people, or is aware that the numbers he or she is looking at can affect other peoples’ lives.
Being a good manager means having many skills, but one thing common to all good managers is that they know how to work with people. A manager who thinks only of profit and productivity without taking into account how his or her team work together will only be successful in the short run, if at all. Good management is the ability to get the best out of any team you are working with, making sure team members are working to the best of their ability.
People management means putting the people in the organisation first, and can range from a complete strategic rethink to simply changing the ways you organise the office furniture. One example of good people management is the company who decided to stop giving bonuses to a few high-flying members of staff in order to give everyone in the company the opportunity of owning shares in it. Another, simpler, example is the manager who decided to turn his desk around and leave his office door open – so that he would not be sitting with his back to anyone, and people would feel more comfortable approaching him without having to knock on his door.
This is similar to the ideas behind common performance management, yet in an organisation which uses performance management a series of line managers are responsible for people below them in the organisational hierarchy. Even if there is genuine 360 degree feedback between line managers and their managees, a weakness in performance management is that it still sees people in terms of their job descriptions and professional roles.
People management is not a management method, but more a set of principles. It is about recognising the fact that employees are human beings, looking carefully at what motivates them and how they can be motivated, looking about the dynamics of any group or team they work in and how they can be made better (whether through team building activities or simple discussion), and looking at what other factors outside the organisation may be affecting their performance at work.
This may seem basic, or even obvious, but in the complex, stressful world of modern business, it is sometimes easy to forget the most basic things. People management is a way of taking time to stop, and remember how important the people you work with are.
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