The Softer Side of Management

Being a manager comes with many challenges. Building a team, devising a strategy, building relationships with other teams, delivering projects - the list is long. But I want to talk about the softer side of management, the human relationship between a manager and their report. A lot of this comes from my own experience and from my conversations at skip 1-1s over many years. Here are my top three pieces of advice in this area, but I am sure you will see the pattern:

LISTEN. SHOW THAT YOU ARE LISTENING

Obviously you can't be a good manager without listening to people, but it may be even more important to?show?that you listen to people. The following conversation is very typical when talking to a report of a new manager who transitioned from a high-performing individual contributor: "My manager is not listening to me" - "Why do you think so?" - "I came to them with this proposal (describes the proposal), and they immediately said it was a bad idea".

This is where you usually pause. To be honest, most of the time you actually agree with the manager that it was not the best idea. You understand that the manager was probably busy, and did not want to spend time discussing the idea. But... First of all, this could be a great teachable moment. If it's obvious to you the idea is bad, but not to your report, ask yourself, why? What context or skills are they missing, for the future?

Far?more important, if somebody feels they not being listened to, there may not even be a "future". They won't come back with another idea. They'll shut down and disengage. It happens often, and, unfortunately, rather quickly.

CARE. SHOW THAT YOU CARE

We talk a lot about empathy. We all (hopefully) show empathy when something horrible happens in another person's life. But I've heard people say to me many times "I believe my manager has empathy, but they are not showing it. When I tell them about some challenge I'm facing, they immediately attempt to give me a solution. Which is good, but I want them to understand how I feel, and how this issue makes me feel. I want them to tell me about similar challenges they've faced in their career. I want them to?think?about my problem. I want them to?show?they care."

Now, you may wonder - why is this employee complaining? They are getting help with their challenge, what else do they need? They simply need somebody to display empathy. This is just how (most) human beings are wired. If this was not the case, we'd be able to replace managers by robots, but we are pretty far away from that.

BE ON THEIR SIDE. SHOW YOU ARE ON THEIR SIDE

Finally, and more complex, I feel that a good manager is on the side of the employee. This is actually confusing, so let's drill down. Yes, a good manager is also evaluating the employee's performance, gives them constructive feedback, gives them a performance rating, handles performance issues. All true. Yet, I still maintain that a good manager can do all that, yet still be an employee's ally, be in their corner, and make sure the employee knows about it.

I've seen two anti-patterns here. The first one involves a manager who actively behaves as if they are on the?opposite?side from the employee. They believe they need to put pressure on the employee, to get more out of the employee. They think of people as "resources". Luckily in good companies these managers are not very common these days.

The second pattern is more common. This is what I'd call a "neutral" manager. Knowing that they have to evaluate the employee, the new manager tries very hard to keep the distance from the employee and keep a neutral position. Which is better than the previous case, but I still feel this is not enough.

The best managers make you?feel?like they have your long-term interests at heart. Don't take it wrong, they will still give you honest feedback and tell you when you are failing. But they do this from the position of trying to help you succeed, and you know it. This makes a huge difference.