In many ways, your effectiveness on the job, new or old, is largely defined by how adept you are at working with others. Above all, the key element to working with peers, subordinates and bosses, has to be interpersonal skills. If you have the ability to communicate effectively, offer clear and precise directions, elicit feedback, and listen well, you’re going to go to the head of the class when it comes to managerial effectiveness.

An effective manager is the person who is keenly focused on how his staff proceeds throughout the day and how well they harness ideas and insights, knowledge and wisdom, and energy and enthusiasm to accomplish the tasks at hand.

The effective manager seeks to achieve powerful results, while recognizing that sometimes, if not often, progress is uneven, enduring twists and turns, starts and stops, and reformulations and reconfigurations.

Throughout business and industry, workers everywhere hunger for leadership. In today’s business world, CEOs and top executives come and go, some days scandal seems to be the norm, and people are likely to pass the buck as quickly as they receive it. The manager or supervisor who is willing to step up to the plate and take a vested interest in the division department team or staff and the well-being of each participant, while staying focused on the work to be done, can actually win over hearts and minds.

While scads of books and articles have been written on being an effective manager, supervisor, or staff worker, paying homage to the following traits and characteristics will serve you well.

The Few, the Proud, the Three

The Marine Corp has long used a method of command called the “Rule of Three.” A corporal is in charge of managing three privates. A sergeant manages three corporals. A lieutenant manages three sergeants and so on. The underlying concept is that each officer in the chain of commands needs to stay focused on three other people.

The workaday world operates, obviously, quite differently. Still, there is a management lesson or two we could learn from the Marines about staying focused and not over-reaching. On this day, what if you focused on the three most significant tasks or projects confronting you? What if you completely focused your attention and poured your concentrated effort into making progress on the first of these tasks?

If you’re managing others what if you were able to clearly and precisely direct your troops so that they were ably prepared to tackle the task at hand? In our quest to get so many things done, too often we fritter our attention in too many different directions. If we’re managing others, we convey this sense of frenzy to them.

By limiting the scope of what we wish to achieve in any given unit of time, such as an eight-hour work day, we give ourselves a strategic operating advantage that we are rarely able to enjoy. Or, if we manage others, we enable them to have a greater degree of focus and clarity that perhaps they sorely desire but have heretofore never articulated.

Being Fair and Consistent with All

Clearly, the people with whom you work are not alike in terms of their skills and background, competence and dedication, or even outlook and enthusiasm. It’s easy to play favorites. Who wouldn’t be more likely to act favorably towards consistent performers, or those with a winning personality, or simply those who you seem to get along with easily?

Being unfair or inconsistent with even one other staff person has ramifications that can undermine your effectiveness as a manager. People see and hear and know when someone else in your department is being treated unfairly. If it can happen to one person, then why not again and again? What’s more challenging and mandatory is to be fair and consistent with everyone. Your quest is to fight for objectivity in dealing with staff so that your emotions don’t take over.

When someone with whom you’re not necessarily favorably disposed messes up in some way, can you approach the situation in the same way you would if one of your favorite people messed up in exactly the same way? Can you give equal time, equal attention and equal caring to each staff member? If you can, be prepared for the pleasant experience of working with a staff that, overall, may prove to be a bit more productive than you would have supposed.

Use Language Accepted by All

Have you ever worked for someone who tossed about corporate buzz words or terminology that he or she apparently didn’t believe in, but was trying to foist upon you? You know, the type of person who would win a Razzy for bad acting? The point being: be real with the people with whom you work or supervise. Use terminology or phrases to which they can relate.

If you’re supervising younger staff, you don’t necessarily need to know all of their lingo. Indeed, you’ll come across as a poser if you attempt to talk their talk while not truly being in their world. Nevertheless, forsaking the platitudes and pat phrases can work wonders. You don’t need to enroll in “Communication 101,” simply be yourself, keep it real, and speak to a staff person as you would a good friend.

You wouldn’t use jargon with a friend, would you? You wouldn’t submit your friends to organizational psychobabble would you? Then don’t do it among your charges.