How do you engage your people to be more involved in their work? The old cliché about the carrot and the stick comes to mind. Some managers feel that they need to be tough, demanding, or unrelenting in their approach.
Well, barking at your employees or dictating to them or condescending to them is usually more detrimental than effective. And if you randomly schmooze with them, people may feel good, but this doesn’t portend more engagement.
A recent article in The Washington Post discussed the concept of emotional labor. This is described as “the work someone does to regulate, modulate or manipulate their feelings to affect the emotions of people around them.”
The author, Rose Hackman, suggests that most emotional labor is provided by women. She contends that those who embrace emotional labor in the workplace are not being compensated for these behaviors.
A recurring management theme is leaders who assume that their people know what’s on their minds. I call this “managing by telepathy”, as these leaders often neglect to articulate what they want.
This is rarely intentional. After all, you don’t sit in your office and think about how you can avoid good communication with your people. But you can get swept up in the busy-ness of your day and simply think that you said something when actually it never left your mind.
I was next in line at a store and the person ahead of me was becoming increasingly frustrated by the answers she was getting from the salesclerk. The person helping her was rude and had a big attitude.
Regrettably, this isn’t so unusual.
How do your employees represent your business when you aren’t looking? Obviously, you can’t be omnipresent but are you comfortable that your employees are good brand ambassadors?
If you haven’t done so recently, you’d be well served to see how your people are doing in this regard.
Management successions occur every day in organizations around the world. These range from promotions to first level supervisors to appointments of new CEOs.
A person who is new in the job and immediately proclaims, “This is how it’s going to be now” will face resistance on multiple levels, while the person who steps in and listens will be received quite differently.
How do you handle the weak links on your staff? My guess is that in most cases you wait too long to take appropriate action. No matter what your experience is, it’s human to avoid conflict, and weak links are, de facto, conflicts.
You know the basics: can the employee improve from skills training? Would the person be a better fit in another department in the organization? Can the person benefit from one-on-one mentoring?
One managerial flaw that reinforces a “no win” scenario pertains to encouraging the people who always say “yes” when asked to go above and beyond.
Let’s be clear: this is not a criticism of those who contribute generously by doing more work. Rather, this is a warning about employees who automatically say yes to everything and eventually become choked.
Sorry managers, but training employees is not just a necessary part of your job, it’s essential. Employees may go through corporate training programs to learn the basics of their jobs, but knowing the basics isn’t enough to succeed.
Managers often complain about how much time it takes their people to get up to speed. When I begin asking questions, inevitably it’s clear that no one is shepherding these people through what they need to learn.
Sometimes you need to make an announcement or take an action that will likely cause discomfort. Leaders who recognize this in advance can shape the message by foreshadowing empathy.
This means that although the impact of the bad news may be hard, you understand its effect and are standing in the shoes of the people receiving the message.