Your first business management job

Now that you have your first business management job, its time to sit down and decide what you need to do to be an effective manager. There are four main aspects in business management: planning, organizing, directing, and monitoring. To gain a better understanding, let's look at each aspect individually.

Planning
Like anything else in life, having a plan is the best way to succeed. Learn about your company before you start your management plan. Know how everyone's job plays an important role in the company. Find out what the company goal is and look at different strategies you can implement to help obtain the goal. Look at ways you can improve the office. Perhaps your staff needs a new printer, or repairs to computers. Find ways to make improvements that will alleviate added time to another person's shift.

Make a plan for different scenarios. Think of the worst possible scenario and devise different plans for resolving it. Talk to your staff about problems that have arisen in the past and how they were resolved, this will give you a little understanding as to how you can change the way you handle situations.

Organizing
Once you have laid out your plan to your staff members, you should make sure everyone is on board. Take time to train employees for their roles and make sure you have the proper equipment available to accomplish your overall plan. Motivating your staff is another essential tool to help accomplish your goal.

Look at your plan and make sure that everything is ready to go when it is needed. If you need to order supplies, get them ready as soon as possible. Again, check with your staff to make sure they understand their role and how it effects the overall goal.

Directing
This is the time when everyone acts out their role and you emerge as a success or a failure. The directing determines your leadership skills. You need to establish trust from your employees to emerge as a leader. Establishing trust is one of the most difficult things a business leader faces. Trust involves feeling that you can depend upon another person to achieve a common goal. You know how people feel about you and how you feel about them. If you have had past incidences with employees and they have formed a negative opinion of you, it will be difficult to change their minds. Change the way you treat people and start pointing out their achievements and telling them why you appreciate them. Take time to listen to your employees. You might be surprised at some of the "little things" that will make a world of difference to a person. Give each employee your full attention and make an effort to get to know them.

Monitoring
Once you have set your plan in motion, follow up with your staff to see how things are progressing. If there are bumps in the road, adjust the plan. This is the time when your management skills will shine. Some of those possible scenarios you planned for may arise and it is up to you to fix them. You need to be aware of everything that is happening so you can make necessary adjustments.

You will undergo a learning process as this is your first experience managing others. It is not easy to manage people, but once you start to learn the groove of things, you should be able to fit right in. With time and patience, you can continually improve your business management skills. If you have failures, learn from them. Pick yourself up and prove to people why you deserve to be a manager and show them how you can recover from bad times.