Be a Better Boss
Welcome to 2022. Yes, we have entered a new year. Like many of you, I have reviewed my accomplishments and plotted a course for this new trip around the sun.
As for me, I have chosen a noble task.
I want to help 10,000 business leaders and company owners become Better Bosses. Let’s start with WHY.
For a long time, there has been a saying among HR professionals. “People join companies but quit bosses.”
Have you ever felt that way? I know I have.
The individuals who get promoted into management jobs and/or start businesses rely on chance and circumstance for ways to figure out how to lead a team. Experience tells me that most fail in some way or another.
I think it’s time we seriously focus on making our bosses be accountable for better behavior.
It’s Tradition
First, let’s be real. In western commerce and so-called ‘big business’, we have this strange tradition of promoting the brightest bulb on the string to be a supervisor when a spot comes open. The logic goes something like this.
“Sally is our best producer. She would be the best one to lead this team.”
WRONG! Instead, we usually end up ruining the best producer and frustrating the team because Sally doesn’t do well leading people. (No knock on Sally. It could be a Bill or a George here too.)
In the case of the entrepreneur, this person has an idea for a product or service. So they start a company. The idea takes off. Pretty soon the owner knows they need a bigger team to keep things going. Hiring begins and the fun starts.
Like the promoted high-performer, most small business founders seldom know how to manage people.
In both cases, you can hope for a collection of positive experiences with prior bosses to model good habits, but guess what? Those folks had their own journey arriving where they were. So did you really get a good lesson?
Nature or Nurture?
Then there is another thought. In the halls of most business schools, you can find a raging debate among academicians about whether leadership is born or bred, nature vs nurture.
I’m not going to rehash the whole debate here. Instead, I will say this. I have met and worked with clients who clearly have more natural talent to be a leader. They have a sixth sense of reading people and making decisions. They are comfortable at the podium speaking to a team or a whole organization.
These individuals do shine in positions of leadership, running companies. And, like professional athletes, they get better with coaching to help them refine the natural-born skills they seem to have.
I wanted to play sports in school. But growing quickly to six feet tall before any notion of hand-eye coordination kicked in limited my future in athletics. Obviously, I was NOT a natural-born athlete. The few things I’ve tried since then, like golf or tennis, have required hard work.
On the other hand, I have worked with clients who did not start with “natural” leadership ability. Instead, they embraced the need to be a leader. They worked hard to learn concepts, principles, and values they could use to become better leaders and, hence, better bosses.
Therefore, my observation is simply this. Some people may be born to be leaders and get better with training. Others can learn to be better leaders with the right coaching, hard work, and commitment.
Back to Human Resources
I knew a global HR professional who boldly led a charge to redesign his company’s entire HR role. His premiss said, “If we trained better managers, our people problems would go away.”
While the company didn’t accept the theory outright, they did permit him to test it with a large global project he was assigned to support. The results were never empirically proven, but the overall success was positive based on exit reviews and employee feedback.
The idea is solid. Better bosses can make a difference in the way work teams view the company. More importantly, it impacts the quality and quantity of work contributed by employees.
Today’s Situation
Add to the above factors the rapidly changing world of work today in the face of COVID lockdowns, remote working, and workforce change.
Studies are beginning to emerge wherein labor pools are voicing one common theme. People are tired of toxic cultures created by bad bosses. Here are a few of these studies:
- Is Your Workplace Toxic? – from Inc. Magazine
- Why Your Bad Boss Could Literally Be Killing You – Forbes
- Does Having a Bad Boss Make You More Likely to Be One – Harvard Business Review
- Bad managers are costing employers their workforce – from Benefit News
Management teams who have historically ignored employee feedback are being systemically voted out of office. No, I don’t mean literally, because there is no such vote. But symbolically, they are receiving a “no confidence” vote from people walking off the job. The “Great Resignation” it is being called.
In essence, the modern workforce is saying “Enough!”
Should You Be Surprised?
If you are in a management position, now is the time to take action. There is always time to review what you do with your team. You can make a change.
Want to be a better boss? Here are a few tips to help get the journey started.
First, disconnect from the tradition and legacy of your company’s “less than” culture. Take a serious inventory of the standards enforced by tradition. Does the culture rely on command and control leadership styles?
More specifically, does the culture rely on any aspect of interaction that serves to diminish an employee’s status? Is it customary to always talk down to the people below you by job grade?
When an employee brings bad news, are they subjected to ridicule and admonishment?
Break that chain. Treat people with respect. No one deserves to be subjected to harsh emotional lashings for trying to do their job.
Next, decide on an intentional change in the way you look at your responsibilities.
Shift your thinking. Can you do more to represent your team? Are there better ways to show your support for them?
Then, upgrade your communication ability. Are you the best communicator you can be?
Step outside your own box for a moment and get a read on the way your messaging lands. Ask for some 360 feedback about your communication style and effectiveness.
Just because you say it, doesn’t mean people get it.
Make your communication a true two-way exchange. State your issues, then ask for feedback on the spot. You can start with a simple ask from your people, “Please tell me what I said, in your own words.”
Also, don’t rehearse tragedies.
This is a line I picked up from the hit TV show “Blue Bloods.” It means don’t dwell on the bad stuff going on. If something fails, make a one-time review of why, learn from it, then move on. Don’t keep dredging up the negativity.
With this also, never use a team or individual fail to justify a ‘public execution.’ Good people fundamentally know if they made an error. You as the boss, don’t have to keep reminding them of it.
Finally, learn how to read the room.
Pay attention to what is going on around you. If people seem on edge about a problem that is in front of them, you have to handle the problem first. Then you can announce a new piece of guidance or instruction. You can’t teach a sailor to tie a knot when the ship is sinking.
The New Year
Turning the page on the calendar is a great way to reset your own focus. Please take a moment to think about how you manage and lead your team.
Can you be a Better Boss? We all can do something to up our leadership game. Why not join me in making 2022 the year of the Better Boss?
