My first “real” leadership role was a turnaround situation at a 100 person, $5 million revenue operation that had the worst profits, employee morale, client satisfaction and quality rates in the company. I still remember meeting with the staff and working with them to craft a plan to fix the situation. A few weeks into the assignment, one of the operation’s employees asked me if I would consider becoming the site’s permanent manager saying “you’re the first manager I’ve ever had in my 20+ year career who’s talked to me like I’m a real person.”
I almost wept when I heard her say that, but, sad to say, in the 20+ years since then, I have met many, many people who have said the same thing. While many managers will say that if you treat your front-line people right then they will treat your customers right, I’ve found that treating people “right” is the exception, not the rule.
There are many ways you can overcome this in the team you lead. Some of them are:
1. Get to know the people on your team as people, what they care about, what they’re passionate about;
2. Walk around your workplace, ask questions, talk to people, listen to their ideas, share your ideas;
3. Don’t view “drop-ins” by teammates as an interruption to your day;
4. View all of these steps as an opportunity to learn what needs to happen and to move the business forward, view them as latent leadership moments.
In my experience, people will go to extraordinary lengths to accomplish things for a team whose leader exhibits these behaviors.
What happened at that first “real” leadership role I mentioned earlier? Together, we fixed the operation and made it one of the best in the company.
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