GOOD PEOPLE MANAGEMENT: a few tips

#1 Be a decent human.

Sounds simple, but so often, managers forget that they should act like a decent human being with all that entails. Integrity. Authenticity. Empathy. Fairness. Being busy, or having a twit boss of your own does not excuse you.

Real Life story to illustrate:

My mum died aged 93, leaving my Dad alone and incredibly sad. He became more confused, and lost all sense of joy and purpose. I knew that even though he was 3,000 miles away, and even though work was insanely busy, I needed to see him more often. Trouble was, I didn’t have much PTO and I really couldn’t afford those long trips without being paid. A Manager I had at the time, simply said this: “Take the time you need and don’t worry about putting it in the system-it is family first”. What a gift!

 In return, I figured out how I could work a couple of days while I was traveling so as not to let anyone down, but I also was able to spend some truly meaningful time with my father without worrying about money. This was a manager remembering to act with decency and empathy. He didn’t worry about what HR would say, he just took care of me. When my Dad died, I didn’t feel guilty because I knew I had made the effort to see him and spend that quality time but it was my manager that made that so feasible and I will never forget his kindness. My manager was a decent human.

#2: Listening is not the same as assuming…

Good listening will often entail asking clarifying questions: if you don’t ask, you can’t know.

Real Life story to illustrate:

One tip a colleague gave me long ago was to ask at every ‘touch base’, what number your direct report was on a happiness scale of 1-10. Remarkably illuminating, because the obvious follow up question (thank you Marty Nemko for this one), is if it’s not a 10/10, but perhaps, a 8/10, what would need to change to make it a 10? I remember asking a bunch of team members this question at a point when I expected most of them to say 2/10 or at best 5/10. The company had laid some folk off, and work was heavy, and no one seemed that upbeat. Super interesting to see that some people were 8/10 because for them, things looked pretty bright. Never assume. I remember asking one direct report for their ‘happiness score’ and it turned out to be really low because the anniversary of their mother’s death was coming up. The mom in question had died overseas without her daughter being able to get to her in time -this made the death anniversary painful and poignant. Asking allowed me to offer up some empathy and to make sure this individual could take time off to grieve in the way she needed to do. If you don’t ask, you can’t know.

#3: Not everyone is like you …and that’s a good thing!

Hire, develop, celebrate, a team that truly compliments each other and does so because they are are not the same as either you, or each other. Don’t hire in your own image or you will end up disappointed. And on the topic of diversity, don’t be the twit who assumes everyone loves x sport and wants to talk endlessly about last night’s game -some of your team likely hate sport and just feel left out when you insist upon this topic. Similarly, don’t assume you are all going to bond over alcohol.

At one company I worked at, a new leader came in who thought we should all do some ‘bonding’. I love it when that happens because some poor exec assistant  inevitably gets tasked with finding out what ‘fun’ activities we could all do that fit within the HR budget, and seem like a good idea to the said new leader. In this case, the consensus was that we should all go into San Francisco and do a treasure hunt. I remember we arrived at some venue where we were divided into teams that consisted of people from different functional areas…very important that we got mixed up and didn’t just stay with the colleagues we already knew. Once the rules of engagement were explained, we were all told to try and ‘win’ the game by finding the most clues, games/tasks and answers in a given time frame. My team consisted mainly of people I didn’t know very well so score a point for mixing us up. Inevitably, it was just seconds before a type A person was giving directions and trying to get us to all charge off in a certain direction. I don’t remember all of the ‘tasks’ anymore but they consisted of quite a lot of extrovert behavior being required. For example, at one point my team was meant to  create and perform a dance in a public area and get someone to applaud (we went with a Michael Jackson song I recall). Why I picked this memory is that there was one moment when some team members had to try and recreate a famous painting by borrowing props from strangers if necessary and playing around with clothing, hair styles etc. While a couple of the more creative members of the team got stuck into recreating American Gothic, a woman who was a copywriter with the company, sat silently and alone on some stone stairs. I sat down next to her and tried to encourage her to join in and she told me she actually just wanted to go home because this sort of activity (the entire ‘fun’ activity) was incredibly painful and she was hating every minute of it. What a light bulb moment! Just because most of the invitees were getting engaged and in many cases having some fun, did not mean this ‘fun’ was ‘fun’ for everyone. In fact, it was torturing one introspective, quiet person who would probably rather have died than dress up as a famous painting and have strangers gawking at her.