Engineering Management 101: How NOT To Kill Your Employees
You’ll often hear that a bad boss causes problems to employees, but did you know that a bad boss can also cause employees to develop heart disease. Yes, you read right, being a bad boss can kill, literally. If you don’t want any of your team to suffer, don’t be too hard on them.
Here are a few tips on how you can avoid being a dictator but still get the job done.
Be FAIR
This doesn’t need much explanation. Just be impartial with everything and don’t favor one over the other just because they look better, or smell better.
Have extra care when making decisions
A simple misread of a situation can give a very stressful environment for your employees, leading them to think that you may be practicing power play.
Be nice. Please.
Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you can be a complete killjoy. Take time to know your employees and be nice to them. It’s always easier to be nice to someone who’s nice to you.
Enable Problem Employees to Change
Rather than adopting a management style that incites problem behavior, tackle it directly:
Step in right away. Don’t ignore problem behavior if you have performance management anxiety. “If the behavior is toxic, delay worsens the situation for everyone”.
Be clear about your expectations. Focus on the behavior you want, not the behavior you don’t want, says Paul Marciano, president of Whiteboard, LLC, Flemington, N.J., and author of Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT.
Approach the problem in a collaborative way to cultivate employee engagement. Try telling the employee: “I’m confused and concerned. I’m confused because I thought I was clear about what I was asking. I’m concerned because my expectation doesn’t seem to have gotten met. Can you help me understand that?”
It’s about the Relationship
Conversations about problem behaviors have the best chance of succeeding when you already have a caring relationship with the employee.
Before you bring up the problem behavior, talk about how much you value the relationship and the employee. For example, if an employee is a loud talker, you might say: “I care about you. I want to help you grow here, so I want you to know that when you talk loud on the phone it distracts others.”
Calling out Bullying Behavior
When bad behavior crosses the line into workplace bullying, shift your strategy toward an emphasis on the rules.
“You’re not going to change the person [who bullies others],” he says. “The most you can accomplish is constraint. Box them in with clear boundaries.”
Don’t attack the person and don’t ask why they engage in the problem behavior — those tactics lead to defensiveness. If you’re challenged with managing an overqualified employee who yells and puts co-workers down, for example, you might be tempted to say, “You’ve got to stop being an SOB, why are you driving everyone crazy?”
Instead, acknowledge their value and then impose the rules. “You’re technically skilled, but when I ask you to share your skills with other people and you make them feel small — that’s unacceptable. I can’t have four people leave to make you feel valuable.”
Talking to employees about problem behaviors is never easy. We’d much rather tell someone they’re doing a great job than discuss problems. Combing a cooperative approach with employee performance issues with a rule-based strategy with office bullies will make it easier for you to frame the discussion. It will also make it more likely that you’ll get the improved behavior you want in your workplace.
Just follow these simple steps and you’re set to have the best environment not only for your employees but for yourself as well.
