Great Managers, Part 1: Trust & Dialogue
You’ve made it! You’re finally the boss, with a handful of team members to supervise and get to function as a well-oiled machine. As soon as you get started being the boss, however, you quickly realize just how difficult a job it is.
The Gallup State of the American Manager report suggests that people leave managers, not companies. This is alarming given that Gallup’s research reveals only 1 in 10 people possess a high talent to manage. Sheesh. The good news is, within that 10 percent, we can identify what good managers have a strong ability to do:
Build trust and dialogue with their people about both work and life away from the office
Coach and develop people by focusing on their strengths
Motivate every employee individually
Engage employees with a compelling vision
Create a culture of clear accountability
Put the right people in the right roles
Make decisions based on productivity, not politics
As a strengths coach, I know there is not a narrow set of themes to make a great manager. Rather, great managers are able to find ways to use their natural talent and developed strengths to accomplish the list above.
That’s the good news in all of this. I believe that the characteristics of a good manager are abilities that can be learned, invested in and improved. It’s true all managers have talent – no doubt about it – that’s how they were promoted to be a manager. However, far more often than not, the talent that got them there does not necessarily translate to being a manger of people.
Our mission at Ryan Church Consulting is to help people use their talent and strengths to improve workplace relationships. We have a strong bias that sustainable, high-performing, fun-at-work, stay-in-this-job-for-longer teams happen because of great relationships. Please join us on the blog to gain some insights about each of the points above as we journey toward becoming your company’s most valuable resource – a great manager.
Let's begin with two of the most important elements of great leadership: trust and dialogue. It goes without saying, trust is the building block of all relationships. It’s is an essential ingredient if there is going to be such a thing as connection. So why is it so neglected, if not seemingly impossible, between team members and their managers in the American workplace?
Gallup’s recent american manager study noted that one of the essential behaviors of the most talented managers is building trust and dialogue with their people about both work and life outside of work.
In other words: relationship, relationship, relationship.
It sounds so simple. Have conversations. Get to know one another. But, Gallup’s study suggests that only about 1 in 10 managers are actually identified as people who communicate a genuine interest in the people that they manage.
The reasons are abundant. They sound like:
“There is a lot to do. I don’t have time for small talk.”
“Oh, they’re okay, they don’t need me to ask about them.”
“What does an old fart like me have to offer to these young folks?”
“I don’t want to blur the line between boss and employee.”
But everything we do (or don’t do) communicates something. Everything we say (or don’t say) communicates something. The question for a good manager who is trying to build trust with her team becomes, “Is this building connection or not?”
In demonstrating this concept, research professor and author Brené Brown uses the image of a jar with marbles in it. Every interaction that creates connection puts a marble in. Every broken connection takes marbles – maybe several – out. Instead of taking small steps like putting marbles in a jar, many organizational leaders love to find THE THING that solves the problem and miraculously creates trust. The marble jar image reminds us it is the accumulation of connections that will ultimately build trust.
The book Strengths Based Leadership asserts the primary reason people follow is because they trust their manager and they trust their organization. While it might be one thing that ultimately ends up being the decisive marble, there are always other marbles – lots of them – that symbolize the many small interactions which build the trust employees and co-workers need in order to follow.
To build trust the resolutions are: start small, get to know one another’s story, and ask for help.
Starting small requires managers to slow down. On average, people moving from deliverables and programmatic responsibilities into management need to reduce their work load 30 percent(!) to have the space to make the relational deposits which matter most. In Gallup’s report about Millennials in the workplace, research clearly shows that weekly check-ins with the youngest workers in the organization were the bare minimum. The study suggests that daily check-ins were ideal.
Get to know each other’s stories When I was working as a director with a 12-person staff of young adults, once a year we would go offsite for one purpose: to share stories. It was an enormous investment of time, but one that payed incredible dividends throughout the year because of the huge deposit we made by listening to each other’s stories. Knowing someone's story, professional, personal and present (What sports are your kid’s playing?) are vital for trust-building connection.
Ask for help It’s a bit counter-intuitive for a boss to think that asking for help from a colleague—or even an employee—actually builds trust. It’s very empowering for a subordinate to be asked by the boss for help. It is also an opportunity for the manager to discover more ways a team member can be trusted. My own career changed when a relatively new boss I had approached me with a situation he was struggling with and asked me what I thought. He listened and responded. That was two decades ago and he remains a trusted mentor to me to this day, and was a rare boss that asked for help.
Leadership is hard, we know this. It is a journey in which we all need help – whether we ask for it or not. But, the good news is managers can learn to aim their natural talents and strengths in ways that create solid connections and real trust among teams.
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