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Management relationships are important
Managing a business, and managing staff, are like managing your own personal relationships, says Wade Oldham. It takes commonsense.
Much of managing a business, be it from a manufacturing or service industry, is just plain commonsense. It continues to amaze me how many businesses, large or small, have significant failings in the area of commonsense.
It seems that one of the underlying problems is that many business people, whether managing their own business, or a public or other like company, think that there is a trick to managing and motivating staff.
Well, there isn’t. Managing staff is the same as managing your own personal relationships — those of your partner, children or even mother-in-law.
The government of this country has contributed to an underlying fear of employees by making it increasingly difficult to get rid of an under-performer or even a workplace menace. This has fl owed over into the relationships between owner/managers and their subordinates. Too many of them ignore, pass off or pussy-foot around their people so that the relationship suffers.
But it is within your charter to tell people that they are not performing. To not do so would indeed be poor management, and ultimately bad for business.
It seems to me, then, that the first step to stress-free people management would be to set some rules. Imagine what a game of football or a wrestling match would be like if no one knew the rules. The same can be said of the workplace.
Make no assumptions about what your people need to know. Start with the assumption of total ignorance and work from there. If you do not have an induction manual, you should — get one started.
The induction manual should cover such details as organisational charts and relationships, business visions — if you have one — and contracts. It should spell out what is expected of each employee. If you tell your people upfront that, for example, bad language will not be tolerated, it is much easier to deal with any problem that arises than to improvise an explanation about the matter on the go.
It goes without saying, there is no point in presenting rules unless management is prepared to follow them with everyone else. The worst mistake a business can make is to have one rule for managers and another (or expectations) for their subordinates. If long personal phone calls are not tolerated don’t spend half an hour on the phone discussing your share portfolio with your broker or your golf game with your mate.
In all instances, employees are square pegs in round holes until the relationship between employer and employee is established. When boundaries are established and employees are given positive feedback on their performance they start to become round pegs.
When no feedback is given usually one of two things will happen. If the employee is passive, the square edges will be worn down by the round hole and the peg will wither and shrink. The job for which they have been employed becomes beyond them. If the employee is aggressive and management is weak, the corners will stretch the hole and deform it — both ineffective.
It’s no trick, but the answer to moulding your people to the job is honesty. Come to think of it, so is everything else in your business and life. Tell people what you think and feel. Your business does not run by osmosis.
This is especially true for high level management such as managing director or general manager. A major problem in business today is communication (to and fro) with the frontline. So many businesses fail (and I don’t necessarily mean go broke) not from monetary issues but because the ideas are not communicated in their entirety to employees, and in some cases management cannot catch the ball when passed by the employee.
This can be a huge problem for businesses in which the bulk of the workforce is blue-collar under a white collar management team which has never done the work that is done on the shop floor.
Another mistake business owners or managers make is to assume they know what their staff is thinking. An example of this: management decides to have a party for employees, but no partners are invited. The manager hopes to bask in the glory of his generosity. Trouble is, there are the “in crowd” and “the rest of them”. Some staff have difficulty gaining approval from their spouses. The outcome is the managing director may be seen in an unfavourable light as throwing comments to the pack.
The cost of the party may have been better given as a bonus or a gift voucher that would benefit all, not just those who are able or choose to go. A $50 gesture to some of the workforce is a pizza with the kids. The boss would have been more fondly remembered by that.
It really is a matter of getting it all into perspective.