DOs
- Get to know the staff. Their family background & interests.
- If possible, make the staff participate in some decision making. Make them feel the ownership and thus give their support
- Appreciate opinions from the staff . Explain reasons for rejection of any ideas.
- Motivate the staff to improve their knowledge and skills by obtaining more certifications.
- Explain the purpose & reason of an instruction.
- Lead by example. Being a leader means you should be a role model to your subordinates.
- Make full use of the office hours by focusing on urgent matters and works that needs to completed in group.
- Create positive & fun working environment. We can be productive and having fun at the same time.
- Meticulous in producing high quality & value adding reports. It shows your professionalism.
- Create portfolio for each staff. This may require the staff to be involved in the same scope for some time to get familiar with the process, sop etc.
- Make the staff understand that their main role is to assist & protect their superior. Do not work in silo with your superior.
- Show your appreciation on extra work/effort by the staff. It can be in the form of material (not necessarily expensive) or verbal communication.
- Spend some time with the staff talking about something else other than work.
- Give more than you should. Do not promise for something that you cannot deliver.
- No favouritism. Obtain feedback to check whether you are seen as being unfair. Bear in mind that you cannot please everyone.
- Explain clearly to staff what is lacking and how to improve.
- Obtain feedbacks on your performance and learn from mistakes including from your staff.
- Anticipate questions to be thrown at you by the top management.
- Upgrade a staff only when they reached the minimum expectation for the position.
- Celebrate your promotion or raise with your team. They are your backbone.
- Give the company its rights and not forgetting the rights of the family of yours & your staff.
- Conduct sessions to learn from each other by sharing mistakes made by the teams and improve on soft skills.
- Allocate some time to do other activities other than work.
- Emphasis on value creation and practical solution.
- Consider all possible angles as early as possible when reviewing the work of the subordinates so that mistakes can be patched up.
DON'Ts
- Listen to only one side of the story. Some people may not be telling you everything.
- Challenge the staff to leave the company. It shows your arrogance and selfishness.
- Shout at a staff in front of others. Do not embarrass your staff with your negative comments in attendance of others.
- Overthink and take too much time to make decisions. Make sure you are productive during the office hours.
- Focus only on the negative side of a person. Some people may be lacking at something but good at something else. Do not exaggerate something to the extent that it can demotivate your team.
- Instruct the staff to respect you. Just as the saying goes, 'respect is earned not given', you cannot force people to respect you.
- Think that you are the most knowlegeable & always right. Learning is continuous process. Your subordinate may be more knowledgeable than you in certain areas.
- Highlight issues that could affect credibility of top management. Such issues nees to be treated differently.
- Raise issues that are subjective in nature unless they are agreed by audit clients.
- Plan to work after office hours unless due to urgency.
- Hold department meeting or discussion unless it is really necessary. Don't waste your time and other people's time with something not important.
- Criticise the staff without giving any guidance.
- Underestimate comments from the board & top management.
- Take action against a staff unless it is confirmed that it was not an honest mistake and the wrongdoing was done intentionally.
- Text the staff regarding work during weekends/ holidays unless it is really urgent.
- Add burden to the department by volunteering to do something not so important to the Company.
- Show to your staff that you don't trust them.
- Depend on your authority & create fear. Work motivation needs to be instilled to the staff through encouragement.
- Stop learning & educating. Learning is a continuous process. Sharing knowledge is also part of learning.
- Invite the staff to come forward if they have any difficulty but blame them for the problem when they come to seek opinion.
- Focussing too much on who is to be blamed instead of how to deal with the issue moving forward.
- Think that everyone likes you and agrees with your decisions. Whatever decision you make must not be based on your selfishness.
- Burden your staff that performed well with more work without any commensurate reward.
- Overcriticise a staff for a few mistakes you detected when he/she had already corrected hundreds of other mistakes.
- Do your personal matters during working hours by using the Company's resources.
