Our Responsibilities to Our People

Just in the past few weeks, people have mentioned the following examples of senior management behavior in their organizations:

• The CEO who manages by email, virtually never speaks with and connects with his people. He does not understand why performance is not better and he rationalizes the high turnover rate. He is a manager, not a leader.
• Another CEO who is slow to respond to emails and phone messages, and people in the home office and in the field have to follow up, often two, three, four times…..and they feel that they and their work are not appreciated.
• Problems and situations involving conflict and difficult employees are ignored and not addressed by senior management. One of our “go to” books is Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. She offers that stress does not come from the problem, it comes from continuing to face that problem. So true, so many managers do not “man up” and address a difficult issue and they avoid the difficult conversation. Actually, we should probably say they need to “woman up” as, in general, women are less tolerant than men at accepting unethical or inappropriate behavior.

We could continue about additional issues people have recently raised with us, but we’ll save those situations for another article.

While the above issues differ, they do relate to the same basic leadership principle, that “Managers focus on numbers, leaders focus on their people”. Of course, leaders have to achieve their goals, certainly, and they realize it’s their people who achieve their results, and a happy, energized team will do their very best.

Our top people must be servant leaders, and genuinely care about their team members, everyone in their company or organization.

Significance of one-on-one conversations

People need to feel appreciated and valued, that they are heard, and that their ideas matter. And that means conversations, not simply emails. It means getting out of our office and going to see and be with our people, to ask how they are doing, what they need, how we can help, what are they learning from our clients, what are their ideas, and what advice do they have for us.

If we ask these and similar purposeful questions and listen appreciatively with an open-mind, we will gain a wealth of rich, helpful information – and our people will feel appreciated and heard.

So, let’s get out of the endless meetings, away from our smart phones, out of our offices and walk the halls every day.

And, again, realizing that our people do need to feel that they are important, we want to demonstrate that they and their work matter to us by responding as quickly as possible to their calls, voice messages, emails, and texts.

Responsiveness and timeliness

Responsiveness and timeliness mean a great deal to our people, and it is just the opposite if we are not. Our people will feel we don’t about care about them. We hear that frequently in our facilitating 360 leadership assessments and organizational culture assessments. And, as a result, morale is low and the people in the company are generally not happy and do not respect their manager.

Sure, we are all busy, yet it is our responsibility to respond, even if “I am in meetings or dealing with an issue, will be back to you as soon as I can, or definitely by the morning.”

Addressing problems promptly

Regardless of whether we are conflict avoidant, as many of us are, it is our responsibility as a leader to tackle the difficult situations and people.

There is an art to having the difficult conversations. We must learn the art. There are plenty of resources, e.g., books, articles, TED Talks, and coaches. Unaddressed issues will likely continue, will increase and cause even more stress and unhappiness – for us, and more importantly, for our people.

Key to highly effective leadership is focusing on our people and their well-being.

Happy employees do better work – as validated in research studies by Professor Christine Porath of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

Watch Porath’s TED Talk “Do Nice People Finish Last or Best?”

P.S. Just before sending this short article to be posted, we caught up with a friend who is with Covington & Burling LLP, a major law firm in D.C., around the country, as well as globally. She loves the firm, and when we asked about that, she quickly cited thoughtfulness of the very senior partners, for example, dinners are provided to those who work late, and taxis for anyone who leaves after 8 pm, and once paralegals leave for the evening it is expected that they will not answer calls from the office. It is clear that the leaders of Covington & Burling care about the well-being of their people. This is a wonderful testament that thoughtfulness and kindness are important qualities of highly effective leadership.