Do leader and manager behaviors affect employees? Does the person in the corner office, or cube, impact his or her employees on a daily basis? Does the communication style and attitude of the boss help or hurt employees?
These questions are not easily answered. To help understand how manager behaviors can affect employees I reviewed a dozen articles online to find positive behaviors that affect employees and of the several dozen behaviors found, I categorized them into six groups: communication, attitude, drive, support, skills, and self-awareness.
An aside: Throughout this and other articles, I am using the term employee to designate a person that directly or indirectly reports to a manager. Before a manager does anything, he or she needs to view each and every employee as a person who has hopes, dreams, strengths, weaknesses, a life outside work, and is not just a number or someone who completes a report.
Communication:
The first area managers can focus on and exhibit positive behaviors is communication. Let it be when a manager first walks in the door, talks to employees face-to-face, or calls employees on the phone or Skype, a manager communicates with his or her employees dozens of times a day and is always on. Communication is also the first area discussed because good, clear communication is important no matter if you are the lowest level manager, a leader of many, or an uberleader of an entire organization, communication will make or break you.
Be open and authentic: What does it mean to be open and authentic; the short answer is to be yourself however you feel comfortable. People respond better to a manager who is open and authentic versus a manager who is hiding behind a veil of mystery. Do you share with your employees what you did over the weekend; the story of how you became a manager; or where you got your degree(s) from? You should share with your employees just enough to fit your comfort level while not being an open book. If you do not share anything, that can be viewed as overly guarded and can inhibit rapport building.
Responsive: Being responsive is about hearing your employees and reacting to their words. Simple enough, but how many people have stories of managers not responding to concerns, either work or non-work related? Too many. Do not let the busyness of being a manager get in the way of being responsive let it be responding to a simple work email or taking time to talk to an employee about a non-work concern, which is often the best way to build rapport.
Understanding of other’s concerns: This can be difficult for managers and is related to being responsive. Understanding of other’s concerns does not mean you have to listen to unfocused complaining all day. It means that if an employee has a concern or is emotional about something you need to hear them out within reason. This can be especially difficult if an employee is emotional because somehow the issue at-hand is important enough to them to warrant an emotional response (some managers have a difficult time reacting to employee’s emotions). As their manager, you should acknowledge their concerns and if needed, try to refocus the employee. Understanding of other’s concerns also helps you build rapport with employees because you will be viewed as a manager that takes the time to listen to your employees rather than blowing off other’s concerns.
Listen to your team: Listening to your team is related to understanding of other’s concerns and is the foundation of being a responsive manager. This might seem simple, but being a good listener is sometimes difficult for managers and for people in general. Listening to your team can be when a single employee is talking to you or when you are in front of the whole team. Being in the moment and truly listening to your employees is empowering and listening to the concerns of the people who do the job day in and day out is good for team moral and for the department and institution as a whole. But if you brush them off or are dismissive of their ideas and concerns (without giving rational) you disenfranchise them and if this happens too often, they will become actively disengaged because their ideas go nowhere.
Honesty: It is important when communicating to always be honest. Does this mean you should never tell a lie or you should be boy scout or girl scout? Yes, it does! Giving honest performance feedback to employees is difficult because people are not always ready for such feedback but it is important for individual growth and departmental growth. Feedback needs to be given honestly, openly, and afterwards you have to listen to their response and post-feedback concerns. You cannot just ‘tell them as it is’ without listening to them and the worst thing to do would be to not create a plan for improvement created by the employee (by consulting with the manager).
In addition to giving honest feedback, as a manager you should always be honest about possible future changes in your organization. This does not mean that you tell them about the changes in great detail because as a leader, you cannot always share such facts but you can tell them, in very general terms and using broad brushstrokes, how the organization is doing and that your team or department is going to change sometime in the future. If you do not update your employees on what might happen then in that absence of information the rumor mill will runamuck and possibly damage people’s morale, productivity, and general well-being.
Speak face-to-face (or phone): Taking the time and speaking face-to-face with in-office employees and on the phone (or Skype) with telecommuters allows managers to connect with employees and build a team or department culture of trust and openness. This does not mean you have to be friends with your employees because that should be avoided but by being mindful, in the moment, and really interacting with employees face-to-face you will build rapport and lay a foundation of goodwill and understanding.
In addition to the direct employee interactions above, being able to communicate higher level ideas in a clear and easy to understand manner is important for a manger.
Communicate the company culture: This is difficult because a company’s culture is larger than any one individual but every manager and every employee affects the company culture. Being able to communicate the ideals and norms of a company’s culture is an important skill needed because if you are not dedicated to the mission and purpose of the organization how can your employees?
Involve people the decision making process: Why? Because your team will have many more ideas than you do when it comes to solving problems or coming up with new ideas. It is also important to include them in the decision making process for employee engagement and buy-in and when an employee idea is not acted on, the rationale needs to be provided even in the most general way.
A persuasive communicator: Being a persuasive communicator is tricky. For overly assertive managers, they feel they are always persuasive but in reality they just dominate conversations. For managers that are not as assertive, they feel that they are unable to be persuasive and do not have a sense of ownership over difficult conversations. A good manager needs to be able to influence employees depending on the situation and that is only truly possible by being open and honest, being responsive, understanding your employee’s concerns, being able to listen, and speaking to them directly after having built trust and rapport.
Nonverbal communication: Finally, a manager needs to be aware of body language and the tone of one’s voice. These two aspects of communication cannot be forgotten or discounted because a sloppy manager will not be aware of how they are coming off physically to employees. If this happens it can lead to misunderstandings not about the words communicated, but the gestures and physicality used.
