How to Improve People Management Skills

Improving your people management skills can significantly impact those in leadership roles and team members. Over the past few years, the modern workplace has faced unique challenges, like employees struggling with burnout and dissatisfaction and employers retaining their top talent. In this professional landscape, people management is arguably more important than ever. 

Creating a positive, collaborative environment that encourages business productivity can be particularly challenging, with many employees working remotely. People management skills can help you develop relationships that lead to better workplace productivity and employee success.

Read more: 10 Essential Managerial Skills and How to Develop Them

What are people management skills?

People management skills cover everything from how you handle hiring to training, developing, motivating, and retaining your employees. While human resource management deals more with the organization’s needs, people management focuses less on legal and ethical concerns and more on employee engagement and management.

Read more: Top Strategies to Build Employee Engagement

Why do people management skills matter?

People management skills matter because they can lead to higher productivity, error mitigation, and employee professional development. To be a successful manager, you'll need to foster employee buy-in and engagement to retain them. Low engagement can lead to poor performance and employees putting in the bare minimum effort, sometimes referred to as “quiet quitting.”

How improving your people management skills benefits your company

Improving your people management skills or learning to put your employees first benefits your company in numerous ways. Creating a work culture and environment that puts people first increases employees' appreciation, productivity, and work quality. When people appreciate and enjoy what they do for a living, they are more likely to be happy to work for your company. The quality of your employees’ work reflects job satisfaction and demonstrates their dedication and commitment. Their dedicated work style can inspire other employees in your organization, too.

Read more: 9 Key Management Skills: How to Show Them on Your Resume

People management skills to focus on

Specific people management skills, like the ones listed below, can improve your leadership abilities and create a stronger workplace environment with better employee retention, whether on-site or remote.

1. Clear communication

Communication is an essential people management skill.  A good manager communicates with their team honestly without being critical. With more companies operating remotely or on a hybrid schedule, communication is vital for keeping employees engaged. 

Consider having regular video meetings with your employees. These meetings can pave the way to open and clear communication. Make sure to consistently communicate with all your employees using language that’s simple, clear, and easy to understand while avoiding information overload. Ensure you always ask if anyone requires clarification and set aside time to connect with each team member individually to keep the line of communication open. Doing so can be especially helpful in remote or hybrid work situations. 

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Read more: What Is Effective Communication? Skills for Work, School, and Life

2. Encouraging trust

Team members who don’t feel trusted are likely to perform the bare minimum and may seek other employment. Trusting your employees typically means being transparent and not micromanaging their duties.

Create conditions where employees trust leadership and one another. One way to begin fostering an atmosphere of trust is to ask employees to share thoughts and ideas in a regular, structured system where you provide positive and negative feedback. Over time, trust should begin to increase.

3. Building relationships

As a manager, you can develop and engage with the talent available in your department. When looking at your next project, use your knowledge of your team to leverage relationships and partnerships that are right for the specific work. Keep in mind, that building meaningful relationships with employees has various positive effects beyond tailoring the workforce of each project. Some additional benefits include improved mental health and increased motivation among your team members.

4. Giving credit where it’s due

Recognize your employees when they achieve their goals, perform beyond their duties, or take initiative. It is essential to let them know you appreciate them as a person and part of your team. Don’t wait to praise the team later; instead, recognize their behavior as it occurs. Showing your appreciation can help build up your employees’ commitment to their performance. 

5. Problem-solving

Recognizing and resolving problems are part of a people manager’s job. Effective problem-solving involves correctly identifying and defining the issue, analyzing the nature of the problem, developing potential solutions, and strategizing and implementing your plan to solve it. To improve your problem-solving skills, keep abreast of changes in your industry and consider attending problem-solving training classes. You can take a course like IBM’s Solving Problems with Creative and Critical Thinking on Coursera.

6. Patience

Being patient is an essential leadership skill, whether training a new employee, introducing a new process or procedure, or resolving conflicts. If you model handling stressful situations patiently, others may learn this valuable skill from you. An employee who knows they can come to you for further explanation and receive kindness and respect is likelier to do so. In contrast, someone who perceives you as impatient is less likely to ask for clarification, leading to poorer quality work. Patience allows you to respond to challenges as they arise in ways that foster cohesion and motivation among your team.

7. Flexibility

Flexibility plays a vital role in successful people management. Accommodate your employees’ needs when possible, such as their preferences for remote work or scheduling, so they can do their jobs in a way that works best for them. Maybe they have a different system of performing tasks that makes them more efficient. Employees can use various ways to get a job done; their results truly matter. Monitor the employee’s results when you accommodate their work preference or style. Assuming their schedule or process is working, you should continue to encourage it. Flexibility can reduce stress on employees and make them happier at work. 

8. Judgment

Using good judgment entails looking at what’s happening around you, listening to what others are saying, and learning from that information. You might notice an element of “gut feeling” in using good judgment, too, because, often, your unconscious mind picks up on sensory signals and makes predictions faster than your conscious mind. Pay attention to all this input as you make decisions for your team.

9. Empathy

Empathy shows employees you can understand their feelings. It helps managers build better relationships with their teams to create a more satisfying work environment. Empathizing with your employees helps them feel trusted and validated, and productivity grows when mutual respect exists. By realizing your employees have a life outside of work and being willing to listen to them, you show them that they are valued.   

Read more: Why Is Empathy Important to Company Culture?

10. Honesty

Strong people management comes from an honest leader. When you are truthful in both good and challenging situations, mainly when stating the truth isn’t in your own best interest, your team will notice and likely do the same. If you are consistently honest with your team members, they will consider you more approachable and trustworthy. 

11. Leadership

It’s better to lead by example than by telling employees how they should act.  Behave how you expect your employees to behave: be accountable, flexible, and honest. Always work toward your own improvement and practice decisiveness. The quicker you decide on an issue, the more confidence you can inspire in your employees.

Read more: What Are Leadership Skills, and Why Are They Important?

How to improve people management skills 

Understanding what people management skills are is only half of the equation. Once you know which skills you need to improve, you can take action to cultivate these abilities. Let’s take a closer look at both of these techniques. 

1. Use journaling to improve people management skills.

Keeping track of your feelings by writing them down is a great way to help you grow as a person and a manager. Journaling enables you to reflect on your day’s events in the workplace and is also a great outlet to ask yourself questions and reflect on your answers to grow your decision-making skills. 

Some questions to consider asking yourself include the following: 

• Do I see conflict as something to avoid or an inevitable issue I can work through with communication? 

• Do I talk to others about needs for improvement and areas of success? 

• Am I willing to delegate work when necessary?

• Can I clearly articulate job duties and expectations to others? 

• What steps do I take to help others develop their skills? 

• Do I follow up with team members who feel frustrated by aspects of their work? 

• Am I too quick to discipline or reprimand others? 

• Am I willing to accommodate the different needs of team members? 

• Do I often keep secrets from the team? If so, why? 

In addition to journaling, consider taking personality tests, such as the Enneagram Personality Test or DISC Personality Test, to identify your possible strengths and weaknesses. The Enneagram test uses a nine-point diagram to reveal your core beliefs and how they impact your personality, and the DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness, conscientiousness) model assesses how you handle stress and express emotions.

2. Role-play to improve people management skills.

People of all types have long used role-play as a learning tool. Contrary to common belief, it doesn't necessarily require a partner. It can be as simple as rehearsing what you want to say to others so you can enter a future interaction calmly and prepared. Role-playing can help you build confidence for real-life scenarios when dealing with employees. 

For example, you can practice delivering more concise instructions rather than giving an employee a long and confusing explanation of how to perform a task. You can also role-play situations that involve giving constructive criticism, being empathetic, or delivering bad news to the team. When role-playing independently, an audio recorder can be helpful because it allows you to assess your performance later. 

Next steps

Learning skills to manage your workers has many benefits, including helping them grow in their roles, encouraging them to take on new challenges, and motivating them to do their best work. Developing your people management skills helps create a positive workplace, so promote an environment of inclusivity where all employees feel heard.

Learn practical ways of managing people in the workplace from instructors at top universities with a course on Coursera, such as The Manager’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Managing People at Work, offered by the University of London, or Principles of Management provided by Johns Hopkins University.