Helpful Working Relationships Are Needed – How to Agree on What That Looks Like

In our work in the business world, we frequently encounter situations where the relationship between the manager and team member is not supportive or helpful. This certainly is a shame, and need not be.

Simply, often the relationships between managers and their team members are anything but productive.

We also help religious organizations, e.g., dioceses and parishes, and surprisingly this is at times also the case between pastors and their more recently ordained priest or staff members.

As with any difficult situation, it must be addressed. If not, it hurts the people of a company or organization.

The question of course is how to address it, which would certainly be beneficial to both parties and their organization, be it a business and their employees or a church and their staff and parishioners.

Our recommended approach, which has received lots of appreciative feedback, is as follows.

• Ask for a meeting with the person to whom we report to explain that we want to do a great job with our responsibilities and it is important that we have clarity of the expectations, needs, and wants of us. This will enable us to focus on delivering what success looks like.
• I emphasize clarity. “Just do a good job” or “Do better” are not good enough. We need specifics. It is important for us to ask follow up questions such as “Help me understand what that would look like to you?” And use silence so our manager must go on, go deeper.
• Then we should say that we would like to share what we need from her/him as our manager so we may do our very best work, for example, as mentioned above, clarity, frequent timely and honest feedback both positive and constructive/helpful, a weekly or bi-weekly one-on-one meeting, or whatever we believe will help us grow and do an even better job, including our serving others.
• And lastly, and very importantly, before the meeting ends, the two of us must discuss and agree on what good communication looks like. Good communication is key.

Do not feel that this is imposing. Conversations are the work of a leader. It is a manager’s responsibility. If she/he is uncomfortable with honest one-on-one discussions, which is often the case, well, to be an effective manager, one must muster the courage – learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable!

Key questions to ask ourselves, to prompt our requesting this meeting:

• Do you agree, this would help your development?
• What would it mean to our team members and other colleagues?
• What would help you set up such a meeting?
• When would be good to request this meeting? Why wait?
• If there is resistance, what could you say to disarm reluctance?

As mentioned, this is a problem in more than a few dioceses and parishes. In fact, a bishop of a large diocese asked us to do a workshop of their priests on how to have the difficult conversation, saying “This may surprise you, but many of us who are clergy are conflict avoidant and often avoid the tough conversations we should be having. Good for him to recognize this and take steps to help his priests.

This should happen more often in the business world as well. It is estimated that half to three-quarters of the workforce do not feel fully engaged. With a sense of “family” and a positive organizational culture, there would be a far more positive and collaborative spirit. Happy employees do better work!