Being an office manager is no easy task—they spearhead the workplace itself and ensure the business’s seamless operation. If you are an office manager, you have tons of responsibility on your shoulders. But you don’t have to worry about your career when you know the necessary knowledge, hard skills, and soft skills of an office manager.
The role of an office manager in the workplace
Office managers oversee the ability of the workplace to function efficiently. They maintain a good workplace environment, supervise the administrative department, and act as the liaison between departments.
Office managers are equipped with both hard and soft skills that help maintain the workplace’s smooth run. Serving as the backbone of the office, they are accountable in process creation, documentation, communication, and supervision and training of team members.
Essential soft skills of an office manager
If you want to be successful in your job as an office manager, you need to master the skills that will make your job so much easier. And in this article, we’ll zero in on the soft skills of an effective manager.
1. Organizational skills
It’s one thing to work for the administrative department, but it’s another thing to actually lead the said team. The department itself is all about the organization of documents, processes, and administrative tasks that need thorough organizational skills.
A huge chunk of your job centers around administrative tasks. These include maintaining and storing confidential documents, hiring employees, evaluating top-performing members, training new hires, scheduling meetings, and communicating with various departments. All of these should be done simultaneously to be effective in your job. And this is only impossible through stellar organizational skills.
2. Communication skills
Outstanding communication skills are always a must for every manager. After all, they are dealing with a large number of people in their scope of work. As a manager, you will often communicate with team members, department heads, clients, customers, and suppliers. This responsibility requires you to have the capacity to handle conversations with others.
To be an effective manager, you need to excel in both written and oral communication. This is because apart from verbal interaction, you’ll also put these into writing as part of the documentation.
3. Conflict resolution
Conflicts are inevitable in the workplace. In fact, it should be an expected aspect to arise every time. And with that said, every manager should be able to resolve conflicts in a wise and logical manner. In your job, you don’t exactly know what kind of issue you will face in the next hour—it could be a budget restriction, lack of supplies, or interpersonal conflicts. And as the head, you will be the first accountable person.
Bearing that in mind, you must have innovative resolutions for workplace issues that affect work productivity and general operations.
4. Great leadership skills
As the manager, you hold the leadership in your department. This means you are the head that ensures everything is going within the team and other concerning departments. Some responsibilities as the leader include providing motivational support to subordinates, ensuring everyone’s efficiency, training members, and monitoring their performance. All these tasks aim to help produce the best performance of team members.
5. Decision-making skills
One of the necessary soft skills of an office manager is the ability to make solid decisions on short notice. Managers deal with lots of responsibilities under their control. And as the head, you have the final say in making these necessary decisions. Thus, you have to be analytical in coming up with prompt decisions.
Excellent decision-making skills include the ability to form valuable decisions that will work best for the organization and the ability to stay calm and composed in a pressure environment as you make critical decisions.
Recommended courses for you
6. Keen attention to detail
All leaders are inclined to have sharp attention to detail. This is most especially applicable for office managers who run the supply management and recordkeeping. Some of the critical tasks under your watch are monitoring office supply inventory and maintaining office records, which need accuracy.
Imagine what the organization would be like if the office manager isn’t detail-oriented. Mistakes are bound to happen since you failed to aim for consistent accuracy.
7. Time management skills
Office managers often have the busiest schedule in the workplace. This is because they handle lots of responsibilities simultaneously. While they may have routine tasks, some duties may arise that need urgent attention. These instances require you to be able to divide your tasks effectively to accommodate other critical tasks.
Good time management skills are one of the soft skills that make every office manager successful in meeting deadlines. And a secret ingredient to proper time management is mastering task prioritization. Prioritization refers to the ability to identify which tasks need your urgent attention and which ones can be done later without compromising the organization’s operations.
8. Flexibility and multi-tasking
Due to your hectic workload, you will need to learn how to do everything simultaneously and adapt to changes in a snap. As the manager, you have multiple accountabilities that will force you multi-task in order to accomplish tasks on time. Neglecting to multi-task will just result in failure to meet success.
In the subject of flexibility, you need to adapt to any changes that may arise in your department. You should always remember that you need to remain flexible and adaptable to both changes and pressure, no matter how overwhelming things might get.
9. Collaboration
The most successful office managers are collaborative in nature as they know it’s a part of the job to establish collaborative projects for employees. After all, collaborations open up opportunities to find ways on how the organization can improve its processes and management.
In being the successful office manager you aspire to be, just keep this handful of soft skills proven to bring success in your career. Need more resources to master these skills? Here are some top Skill Success courses every manager should check out:
Ready to channel the best manager in you? Click here to get started.
Your privacy is secured and your information will not be shared
