The current lockdown situation due to the pandemic applies has made evident a clear struggle to juggle professional and personal lives within the same roof. The resulting 24/7 work culture is not working well for anyone; and it creates its own issues.
At the core of this issue is self-management, which won’t come naturally given how we operate practically in silos. Here’s the good news, it can be practiced until it becomes a part of your normal nature.
Step 1: Know your values.
As a company begins to build its own brand, it takes time to set and define its core values. Why they do this, you ask? Quite simply, values drive purpose. And purpose drives decisions. Being your own manager comes down to asking yourself the following question:
Why are you doing what you’re doing?
Core values are critical to influencing the decision you make. Let’s say you got two equally good opportunities for your business, and you have to choose one. What finally helps you weigh one over the other?
Values are what help you prioritize, and ensure staying true to who you are. If you don’t know what your values are, you’ll struggle with making business decisions.
Step 2: Define your goals.
In the same manner as of defining values, you need to define your goals as well. What are you hoping to accomplish? This is also critical to helping you make decisions and to ensure you feel fulfilled in your career. The destination you have in mind decides the journey you will make, and the steps you take as well.
Step 3: Have a good communication tool.
The ability to communicate depends heavily upon people's interpersonal skills. After all, it is a tool people use to interact and communicate with other individuals in an organizational environment.
But in the present situation, communication in the work environment often needs the efficiency to speak to multiple individuals, along with the effectiveness of getting the same message across to everyone. This is where a tool like MultiCall comes in as useful, and as a must-have in the manager’s toolkit.
Not only does it let you call your many people in one go, there is no hassle typical of conferencing either. Free of PINs and moderators, it is an instant solution for calling many.
In addition, the participants of the call do not need to relate to data or even have the app installed. MultiCall requires data only to initiate the call. The tool lets you be your own manager as well with an assortment of features at your fingertips, such as Groups, Favourites, and Call Monitoring.
Step 4: Check in with yourself.
It’s standard business practice for managers to carry out periodic review calls with their team, as this allows the opportunity to review goals, the progress of deliverables and address any queries or issues that the members may be facing.
This is definitely important. But unfortunately there’s one person everyone forgets to check in with. Themselves. Checking in with your own goals, be it personal, professional, or otherwise is a crucial step to being you own manager. This can be on a timeframe of your liking; weekly, monthly, and so on.
Step 5: Track your time.
Ask yourself something: How exactly are you spending your time?
If you’re unable to answer this, you can’t master time management, which is also crucial to managing yourself on the whole. Analyse how you use your time, so that you may know where you can better improve it. As a lot of time at work goes into communication, this is one area where you need to ensure optimization.
MultiCall’s Call Scheduling comes in here. Not only does it assist to manage your time in setting the ‘when’ of the call, but the Call Duration feature also lets you decide how long you’d like to target for the same.
Step 6: See to your own development.
Every good manager ensures that their team members grow, be it through various means such as enrichment of responsibilities, mentorship or promotions. But when you are being your own manager, encouraging your own personal and professional growth can be fairly tricky.
To ensure your own development, recheck and revise your goals and feedback you’ve received. Are there any specific areas that are in need of improvement? Are there goals you’ve reached and goals you still haven’t yet?
As one among many growing, growth sometimes means connecting to a community, so why not form one with others who are in your field? You can carry out a monthly networking call to share what you’ve learned and follow up with one another on a regular basis.
Step 7: Remember when to delegate.
There is a difference between being your own manager and doing things all by yourself. It’s important to remember this as people tend to confuse them as the same.
Good managers knows when to delegate tasks. So knowing when to delegate yours will not only save you time (and perhaps headaches?) it also will ensure efficiency and effectiveness while accounting for everyone else’s input.
Step 8. Remember to take a break.
With Impostor syndrome being one of the signature Work-From-Home issues, many people tend to forget this particular step, resulting in plenty of burnouts in the process. Work deliverables are important, but breaks are important too. Each answers to the other.
In the present case of working in silos, it becomes rather easy to overexert yourself, given the perception that virtually everything that seems your responsibility is one that no one else can take over. This rationale is exactly why you need to take a break: if you burn out at work, no one can take over for you either! Employers do give their employees leave every year, so remember to give yourself a holiday!
Good managers utilize the tools to optimize the performance of their team, and the operations of the company in the process. Likewise, being their own manager using the eight steps above also is crucial for mastery of the skills to being a better one to their team.
