If you are responsible for the employee(s) at the workplace, then you need to read this. I have found these tips very helpful for me and I am still learning them daily.
- Not really caring about the people you work with.
I understand that work can be very demanding with targets to meet, clients to please, teams to run and top management meetings to attend to. Give it 5-10 years, and you won’t remember much of the tasks you are assigning today, instead, you will be left with a clear reminder of how your relationships with the people you worked with were great or not. So, show care in your words and in your actions. A little how is your health now? How is your baby doing? How did your exams go? Are you sure you are okay? Will go a long way in adding value to the people who work with you. There’s a saying that people don’t care what you know, till they know that you care. If your employees send you messages of ill health, respond with a message as well or a call. Your employees are not machines that deliver at the press of a button, they are human too, make them feel you care about them.
- Transferring the aggression of past hurts from Boss-employee relationships that went wrong.
If you have unresolved issues from past work relationships, you will most likely bring them forward to every other relationship you have at the workplace. Your unresolved hurts will form the basis of some of your decisions which may include, lack of trust, a decision to only look out for yourself alone, care less about others but work, step on every toe to get whatever you want and other projected insecurities. For example, if you got fired on a job for signing off on a paper that led to fraudulent actions, even though you didn’t partake in the fraudulent actions. In your next job, tendencies are that you may never trust anyone who brings you a document for sign-off. You may have an opinion that such people are there to bring you down as before. If this is not consciously addressed, you will consistently react extremely to people in this role and may trigger a freeze and flight mode of communication with them.
- Your direct reports walk on Eggshells around you,
If your junior colleagues can not express themselves freely or find it hard expressing a different opinion from yours on work issues, you may need to take a second look at this. If you are the only one who speaks for the most part during your team meetings, you may need to look at this as you may be crushing your team instead of building it. The people who work with you should trust you enough to share their opinions on the work without been maligned, shut up or down or emotionally abused.
- You hardly stand up for your team.
It’s every man for himself on your team. Every member of your team is responsible for himself. Good or bad…. erm especially bad.
- You Never Celebrate your team, nor increase their visibility in the organization in any way.
You always want to be at the forefront without acknowledging the efforts and much hard work and support given by members of your team to ensure that quality work is delivered consistently.
- You make Performance Appraisal periods your weapon.
You never give ongoing feedbacks to your team during the year, on their areas of strength and areas they need to improve on. You prefer to wait until that period to exert your “power and authority”. Giving people feedbacks will open up their perspective and help them develop on the role.
