In any organisation, people are the most crucial resource company possesses to run the business. Operations that those people steer are the most essential within the business. In other words, we can say that human resources are one of the crucial elements in any business, even in this age of technological automation.
People are the pillars and foundation stones of an establishment. Understanding the work requirement and the people working with you is a critical component. This is one of the things which any organization expects from you as a manager. You must understand the profiles, strengths, and weaknesses of your employees reporting to you. If possible, it's also beneficial to understand your team members and extended line of employees on a more personal level.
There's no substitute for knowing the people who work with you as they know you and you know them very well. Hence, you also succeed at managing them and getting the desired result without fail.
Why is it said that you should know your employees and what benefits you get out of it?
In case you are wondering what you stand to gain as a manager by getting to know your employees; here are two key benefits of knowing your employees:
1. Knowledge regarding what your employees can do — their abilities and strengths
Your core responsibility as a manager rotates around collectively utilising your employees' or team members' individual strengths to improve productivity and performance. When you know what abilities and strengths your employees possess, you realise which tasks they are better suited to do and give desirable results.
In this way, you'll find it easier to assign the task to someone you know who will be able to perform it in the best possible way and get maximum productivity out of it. It isn't easy to learn all the abilities which are not necessarily stated on provided résumés, so you will have to experiment through interaction and discussion on the topic. Naturally, some employees have certain qualities, but they might not be aware of them due to different exposure.
As a manager, you may need to delegate your leadership responsibilities on specific projects. In such situations, you will need to pick an employee with a natural talent for leadership to finish, or maybe you could have the best of them promote an idea to upper management. In this case, you will need someone with excellent sales and marketing skills.
When you want to build a team for a project, you will need to know the right people to be involved in the right job to perform as a leader. This can be the only way to choose the right person for a particular task by understanding their abilities.
2. Knowledge of what your employee cannot do — their weaknesses and challanges
For a manager, knowing your employees' weaknesses and challenges is just as important as knowing their strengths and abilities. Looking at it from a managerial perspective, identifying your employees' strengths and weaknesses is the key to revealing their productive potential.
Learning about their weaknesses will help you make smarter decisions about giving them complex assignments and your expectations regarding the outcome in the workplace.
As a manager, you have to manage the people, which perform the technical tasks. If you don't understand the strength and weaknesses, fail to create a synergy in their efforts. Without confirming consistency in their actions, the task will become surprisingly difficult to achieve.
Many people get promoted to managerial positions not because of their leadership abilities but because of their technical expertise in their field of work. Your organisation places you into a managerial role without any planning and anticipates a high level of expectation from you to perform well. At that time, you will realise that you need people skills to support your role.
Your technical skills may be carrying your load for a day or two. However, real problems start occurring when you don't have people skills. That's when you find yourself in hot waters...