“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” – Anne M. Mulcahy
Are you, like me, in a relationship with somebody that has a more regular working schedule?
I am married to a high school math teacher. She often works, at home, on nights and weekends but her work schedule at school is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday. Throughout my career, I once held a position with a clear start and end time for my shift for 6 months. For every other position, I only knew at what time I was leaving home to go to work. I was leaving work when I could and it seemed like all the problems were always occurring in the last hour before my planned departure.
I was telling my wife:
I should be here for dinner. It rarely happened.
The funny thing she used to tell me was
Come back when you are done.
That is the moment I laughed and remembered that she doesn’t know what life is in the corporate world. It never stops. You always have more work to do.
If I listened to her, I would still be there (probably a little bit tired 😆)
All this to say that I understand that most of us, at work, are goal oriented and that we, sometimes, can forget the value of human interaction. As a manager, you have a lot of responsibilities and you are accountable for the results of your team.
You have to plan the workload for your employees, write reports on the completed tasks of the day, attend meetings, work on the strategy to reach your team’s objectives short and long term. You also have to manage your team and this is the region of the unknown because you never know what will happen when you interact with them.
This can rapidly become overwhelming and, to save time to perform the tasks assigned to us by our bosses, we start to neglect the time spent with our team. When questioned about it, the answer we mostly hear is: I do not have time.
I agree time is finite and we have to decide how to better use it to reach our goals. The output of time spent on projects, clerical and planning tasks can be easily measured.
It becomes blurry when you start talking about spending time with your team members. We are afraid of wasting our time and the time, therefore output, of the employee with whom we are engaging. So we go back to the original sentence: I do not have time.
Really?
Like going to the gym or exercising, the excuse of lack of time can be challenged here.
You are telling me that you don’t have time to greet your employees at the start of the day, to take a walk to see the daily progress or to get to know your team members.
Never…
Not for 20-30 minutes per day
Again, Really?
I’m sorry to say but this needs to change if you want to achieve success down the road.
Where to start?
At this time, I would suggest a little change in mindset.
What if, instead of spending time with your employees, you would switch your thinking to investing time in your employees.
I do not suggest you should literally see your employees as money you invest in the stock market because they are human beings. I would suggest using the same mindset you have when you think about managing your money. You want to protect it, help it grow by placing it in the right conditions and, finally, reach your financial objectives.
Active Listening
With the employees, you don’t even have to talk, just listen to them and engage with them. We, as humans, want others to listen to us and we feel important and valued when we have an audience.
Maybe, eventually, they will want to know more about you to reciprocate the nice gesture but maybe not at first. Make it all about them because they are the one doing the work and their wellbeing will have a great impact on their mood and performance.
The most impactful little gesture you can do at the beginning is learning your employee’s name. Easy when you have 3 to 10 employees, harder when you have 50-200 employees. But the impact is the same. In your employee’s eyes, they are not numbers anymore but part of the team.
It is OK if you say the wrong name the first time and your employee corrects you. He or she knows that you tried and you are interested in getting to know them.
I used to manage a production team of about 100 employees per shift and about 30% were coming from external agencies growing the pool to about 250-300 employees that worked in my team in the year I was in charge.
Did I know the name of everybody?
Surely no
But I knew about 75% of the names of employees that came in more than 3-4 times.
One gentleman that worked for an external agency, told me that, out of all the managers he worked for in the various factories the agency sent him, I was the only one that knew his name. He thanked me for it.
After hearing this story, do you understand how important this is?
This gentleman was better engaged when working in my team because I knew him and valued him. He probably mentioned it to his friends who then saw me as a good person. All this creates a positive work environment and I had to invest a minimum time to ask the names and try to remember them.
I have a good memory which helps. If this is not the case for you, write it down, try to associate the name with something else to remember it. Say the wrong name. It does not matter, they will appreciate the effort.
This is only the first step to build a relationship with your team members.
If you want to know other ways to better connect with your employees, I have written a free guide called:
5 Must-Ask Questions for Happy Teams.
Never forget: what impact does your mood have on your performance and overall attitude?
Now, imagine if all your employees or collaborators were happy…
Carl-Michael Tessier
Team Performance Coach and Personalized Leadership Guidance
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