Over the coming months, Liquid Personnel are delighted to offer a unique series of articles on management issues.  Written by Brian Amos, a social work manager and consultant with extensive experience in children’s services, the series promises to provide great insight and advice on several key management issues…

How to be an effective manager in social care:

Part 1 – An Introduction

Which would you rather be; a successful leader or a successful manager? What is the difference?

A textbook answer could be: “A manager ensures things are done right; a leader ensures that the right things are done.” Another answer could be: “A manager is a leader who uses influence and authority to ensure that targets are met with the available resources.” One thing is clear from each of these answers: it will be necessary for the manager/leader to call upon a range of skills and attributes to enable them to be effective.

In the next few months, this series will continue with various headline topics.  These will focus on what I feel are necessary requirements for effective and successful managers/leaders in social care.

However, in order for you to make good use of this series, continuous self-reflection will be necessary; to enable you to (accurately) identify your strengths and weaknesses, and how to manage them accordingly.

This series will seek to enable you to consolidate and/or improve the following:

• Build effective and responsive interpersonal relationships;
• Help people grow and develop their skills and capabilities;
• How to support your manager;
• How to effectively delegate;
• How to build an effective team, and enable team members to collaborate;
• Effectively setting and achieving goals;
• Addressing your own training and development needs.

Colin Powell once said, “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavours succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.”

Social care is now at a place where the best managers need to stand up and be counted. We have to achieve more with less. It calls for us to be even more resourceful, demonstrating a strong ‘can-do’ attitude.

Look out for the first full instalment in the series in the next newsletter – “Becoming an Agent of Change”.

Brian G Amos

Director/Principal Consultant
BGA Social Care Solutions Limited

For more information on this series, or to provide feedback, please contact us.