What makes a good manager? 10 traits to build trust

Can you name a single successful sports team that thrives without a good coach? Probably not. Even if you have the best player in the league, you need a strong leader to inspire, support, and guide the team to success.

The same goes for your workplace. As a manager, it's your job to guide your team, make the best possible decisions, and balance individual needs with company-wide objectives. Thankfully, you can develop the soft skills you need to be an effective manager,starting with these 10 qualities.

Why good managers matter

A good manager communicates clearly, empowers their team, and connects daily work to meaningful goals. They build trust through accountability, adapt to change, and create an environment where employees feel supported and motivated to do their best work. The best managers combine these core qualities:

• Clear communication: Sharing information openly and setting expectations

• Empowerment: Trusting team members to own their work

• Accountability: Taking responsibility for team outcomes

• Adaptability: Navigating change while supporting the team

• Goal alignment: Connecting daily tasks to organizational purpose

Research shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement levels. In today's workplace, the role of a manager has shifted from taskmaster to coach, requiring adaptable leadership styles that set great managers apart. According to Deloitte's 2025 Human Capital Trends research, a manager's ability to lead, inspire, and engage the workforce is one of the largest influencers in maintaining a productive organization, highlighting that modern management requires more than task oversight.

10 qualities of a good manager

While there's no single blueprint for great management, the best managers share core qualities that can be learned and developed over time. Your unique skillset and experiences will shape your management style, but mastering these 10 qualities is a great place to start:

• Communication and listening: Be inclusive, establish norms, and practice active listening

• Trust and empowerment: Empower your team, be decisive, and hold yourself accountable

• Leadership presence: Be confident, develop adaptability, and know when to push or pause

• Integrity: Be honest and transparent in all interactions

1. Be inclusive

To build a diverse team, you need to foster an inclusive, positive organizational culture. When every team member feels respected and valued, you boost employee engagement and produce better work. The key is building your emotional intelligence. Here's how to put it into practice:

• Have open, honest conversations with your teammates about how they feel at work and within the team.

• Implement time for conversations and feedback to create a feeling of safety.

• Help your teammates feel empowered by recognizing their ideas and work.

• Recognize each team member's unique qualities and assign work that complements their specific skill set.

• Establish group norms that encourage your whole team to practice inclusivity.

• Look for team members with different career paths to bring a variety of people and skills together.

Pro tip: Remember that creating an inclusive environment is an ongoing process. Part of doing this involves establishing and verbalizing group norms so your team can follow suit. If your organization offers training on team synergy or conflict resolution, make sure to take part and keep learning.

2. Establish communication norms

More often than not, project mistakes come down to a communication error rather than a performance issue. Effective communication is vital for completing tasks and boosting team morale.

To streamline conversations, create a communication plan that defines your communication channels and what each should be used for. For example, your communication plan could look like:

• Use Slack for synchronous day-to-day updates, quick questions, or team bonding group chats

• Use Zoom for one-on-one meetings or presentations.

• Send emails to communicate with external partners or stakeholders.

• Use Asana to communicate asynchronously about project management, schedule tasks, and track project progress.

Pro tip: It's important to understand how your team communicates, both individually and as a whole. To gauge if you're communicating effectively, ask for feedback. Feedback and performance reviews are great ways to start an open dialogue about how you can become a good leader to your team members.

3. Practice active listening

This key aspect of team management is often overlooked because it seems simple. But listening is more than just hearing your team; it's a skill that improves communication, boosts collaboration, and builds trust.

To be a better manager, focus on active listening, which means listening with the intent to fully understand what the other person is saying. Here's how to practice it:

• Ask open-ended questions to gain a deeper understanding of what your teammate is communicating.

• Paraphrase or summarize to confirm you're fully understanding what's being said.

• Avoid distractions and resist the urge to multitask during conversations.

When your teammate brings up the problem they need to solve, reflect back on what they’re saying (‘What I hear you saying is…’). Sometimes just hearing a problem relayed back inspires someone to realize they already know the answer.”

Pro tip: Active listening also helps with conflict resolution. Beyond paraphrasing, use "I" statements to center on your experience; for example, say "I felt like my feedback didn't resonate" rather than "You didn't listen to me."

4. Empower your team

A key component of building a strong organizational culture is empowering your team and placing trust in them. Good company culture drives motivation, increases retention, and boosts productivity and well-being.

To show your team that you trust them:

• Delegate responsibilities and make work processes collaborative

• Check in regularly to build rapport and ask for feedback on your performance

• Value their opinions to strengthen trust and help them feel confident in their work

Pro tip: Show that you want the best for your team by prioritizing their aspirations when possible, and taking responsibility when you fall short. One way to show your team you care about their growth is to support them in creating professional development plans.

5. Be decisive

As a manager, you are responsible for making decisions that affect the entire team. To avoid conflicts when making important decisions, apply critical thinking, leverage group decision-making techniques, and communicate properly by:

• Informing your team of your decisions as soon as possible.

• Giving your team time to process and react,especially if your decisions will affect their work or personal lives.

• Offering explanations and context for your decisions. Your team will appreciate the transparency, and it's crucial to building trust.

Pro tip: Use processes and practices to develop better decision-making skills. For example, if you're deciding which project to prioritize, you can use data-driven decision-making models that incorporate all the facts. Or use the ladder of inference when you need to explain why you came to a certain decision.

6. Hold yourself accountable

Your team isn't perfect, and neither is their work. But ultimately, the buck stops with you,which means you need to take responsibility for any missteps. This is called accountability, and it's one of the harder leadership skills to learn.

There's an upside to this: by taking accountability for your team's mistakes, you help them learn from them. It builds trust and shows your team it's safe to experiment and take creative risks.

Pro tip: Accountability isn't just about taking the moral high ground; it's also the quickest way to find a solution. Problem-solving will be one of your key roles as a manager, and you can't start that process if you don't acknowledge there's an issue. After you take responsibility, dive into problem management to ensure that you spot and stop similar mistakes in the future.

7. Be confident

Being a confident manager sets the tone for the team and makes it more likely that they will follow suit. Even if you're a new manager with limited experience, draw on the hard work that got you where you are to build confidence in your new role.

To build confidence:

• Identify your strengths and keep a record of your successes

• Look back on past wins when you need a boost

• Acknowledge tough situations, overcoming them becomes future confidence

Pro tip: You should also find ways to show your confidence in your team's abilities. Be there to offer guidance if necessary, but show that you have faith in their abilities by trusting them with important tasks. Host recurring 1:1 meetings with individuals to reinforce positive feedback, reminding them of the value they bring to the team.

8. Develop adaptability

Your team relies on you to take control, no matter the situation. As a manager, you're responsible for facing changes as they occur and helping your team adjust. Being more adaptable helps you stay calm when issues arise, allowing you to make better decisions in challenging times. Korn Ferry's 2025 leadership research identifies adaptability, collaboration, and authentic leadership as the key competencies for management success in today's workplace environment.

Pro tip: Build adaptability before you need it. Here's how:

• Embrace change: View shifts as opportunities rather than obstacles.

• Keep an open mind: Approach every situation with curiosity.

• Push your comfort zone: Routinely take on unfamiliar challenges to build your resilience.

9. Know when to push (and when to stop)

The best managers do two things: push their team to grow and support them in slowing down. To produce good work, you have to hit certain goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), objectives and key results (OKRs). Butresearch shows that employees with effective managers are 15 times more likely to perform well and 3 times more likely to remain at their job.

Your role is to manage both aspects of the work and know your individual employees well enough to spot when they need to push through and when they need a break.

Pro tip: Clearly outline expectations and deadlines in advance to avoid miscommunication. Save everything in a single central source of truth so anyone can reference it at any time. Build extra time into project calendars to ensure that there's time for both work and rest.

10. Be honest

The last quality on the list might just be the most important: be honest. At the end of the day, your team relies on you to guide, support, and champion them through the ups and downs of their work lives. Transparency builds trust with your team and holds you accountable, which shows everyone that you're here for them.

Pro tip: Scheduling regular feedback sessions creates a safe space to share and be honest with one another. Instead of blaming someone for a mistake they made in the moment, you can structure your response more constructively during a scheduled review. On the flip side, this time gives your employees the opportunity to be honest with you.

Actionable tips to help your team succeed

Developing core leadership traits doesn't just happen; you need to take action. These tips will help you put your leadership qualities into practice, and ultimately, guide your team to success.

Align your team's goals to your organization's purpose

One of the most impactful things you can do as a manager is provide your team with context for why their work matters. Our research shows that when teams have clarity on how their contributions affect the organization's objectives, their engagement doubles.

Unfortunately, most employees lack this clarity:

• Only 26% of employees clearly understand how their work relates to company goals.

• Just 16% feel their company effectively sets and communicates these goals.

When your teammate brings up the problem they need to solve, reflect back on what they’re saying (‘What I hear you saying is…’). Sometimes just hearing a problem relayed back inspires someone to realize they already know the answer.”

By clarifying your team's goals and project's objectives, you allow them to see how their work aligns with broader organizational goals.

To help them visualize this connection, use a goal-tracking tool that shows how their individual and daily work contribute to long-term goals or a company's mission.

Delegate

Micromanaging occurs when you attempt to control every part of a project. It's difficult not to try to be everywhere at once when you know you're responsible for a project's success. But micromanaging can lead to you and your team members experiencing:

• Decreased trust

• Increased annoyance

• Lack of faith in their (and your) abilities

• Burnout

• A loss in sight of the big picture

The opposite of micromanagement is macromanagement. To become a macro manager, practice delegating responsibility amongst your team members.

To delegate effectively:

• Understand your team's strengths and weaknesses before assigning work.

• Play to individual strengths and align tasks with team members'goals.

• Connect their interests to team objectives so they're motivated to succeed.

If a leader isn’t trusted, none of these things [skills] matter. You can teach people ethics, but not integrity. Additionally, even with the very best teaching, you are likely to make mistakes until you learn how to apply judgment and customize what you’ve learned to the specific context in front of you.”

Although you should not be responsible for overseeing every detail, understand that there are some tasks that cannot be delegated. On those tasks, it's necessary to step in and take the lead.

Set clear goals and expectations

Setting clear goals is one of the most effective ways to achieve success. It's your responsibility to clarify the desired outcome for the project your team is working on, the clearer your expectations, the easier it will be for your team to follow suit.

SMART goals are a great format for setting goals:

To track your team's progress, you need a central source of truth. Goal-setting software allows you to schedule milestones and quickly produce project status reports that give your team the context they need to succeed.

Leverage collaboration tools

Collaboration software improves your team's productivity by creating visibility into plans, processes, and progress. The right tools enable:

• A centralized location for important tasks, so every member can stay updated on project progress

• Visibility across the team, helping each member understand why their task needs to be done a certain way

• Better time management by streamlining work and turning ideas into action faster

Collaborative software isn't a total replacement for workplace communication; it's a supplementary tool to strengthen teamwork and streamline work. Aim to still check in with each member of your team regularly.

Make time for team-building exercises

Regular team-building exercises don't just make for a fun break; they create stronger bonds within the team. Team building can increase trust, improve team effectiveness, and encourage collaboration. Try these approaches:

• Quick icebreakers before calls to brighten everyone's day

• Full-day activities either in-house or off-site

• Professional facilitators for fresh input and new ideas

To get the most out of team building, schedule activities during work hours. Even fun work activities shouldn't interfere with your team's free time.

Mistakes good managers avoid

Knowing what makes a good manager also means understanding what to avoid. Even with the best intentions, certain habits can reduce your team's trust and motivation. Watch out for these common mistakes:

• Micromanaging: Instead of controlling every detail, trust your team to own their work. Provide guidance and support, but give them the space to succeed.

• Avoiding difficult conversations: Great managers address issues head-on, whether it's providing constructive criticism or resolving conflict. Open dialogue builds trust.

• Failing to provide clarity: Without clear goals and expectations, teams can't prioritize effectively. Ensure everyone understands how their work connects to the bigger picture.

• Taking credit for the team's work: Always give credit where it's due. Highlighting your team's accomplishments shows you value their contributions and builds morale.

How to measure your effectiveness as a manager

Improving as a manager starts with understanding your impact. You don't have to guess if you're doing a good job. Use these methods to get a clearer picture of your effectiveness:

• Ask for feedback: The most direct way to learn is to ask. In your one-on-one meetings, create a safe space for your team to share honest feedback about what's working and how you can better support them.

• Review team outcomes: Look at your team's performance. Are they consistently meeting their goals? Is the quality of their work high? Team success is a strong indicator of effective management.

• Look at engagement and retention: Teams with high employee satisfaction tend to stick around. High employee engagement and low turnover are often signs of a healthy team culture, which starts with the manager.

Better managers, better work

Each manager has their own unique management style, and that's great. But a combination of great communication skills, the ability to delegate, and a willingness to use the right collaboration tools will set you apart from the rest.

Ready to put these management qualities into practice? Get started with Asana to align your team's goals, delegate effectively, and build the communication habits that great managers rely on.

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Frequently asked questions about good managers