How To Rein The Best From Employees Without Reigning Over Them

As a business leader, you should live by the words, that you want to be a leader and not a ruler. Ruling over somebody is much like an aristocratic or monarch would do back in the Middle Ages. It’s not so much as garnering and emboldening the employees that work for you, but more so ordering them around. They will feel marginalized and as if you’re reigning over them, as if you were their master. This creates a lead by fear atmosphere, and among other things does not secure their loyalty to you. Why would they follow you anywhere, when they don’t not like you but they don’t respect how you run the ship? You’ll be surrounded by a bunch of yes-men, who would rather avoid giving you their true opinion and advice, and sharing their best qualities with you.

Pretty soon you will have an office that turns up for a paycheck and you will feel hollow. You don’t have a business that is filled with people that would follow you anywhere, because they believe in you. And yet, you’re not their mother or father either. You are their leader, and you need to be firm and sometimes ruthlessly direct in what you want. However, you need to also be someone who genuinely cares for them and wants them to succeed in their own right too.

The battle of the deadline

Businesses all around the world will begin and end a project in a very similar fashion. At the very start, there will be a boardroom meeting about what the next project is going to be and why. They’ll be many questioned asked of your executives and chief among them will be whether or not you are still staying true to your main goal and your ethos as a business. From here the project will spiral upward, stopping off any all your departments and allowing the heads of departments and the managers to have their input. The way a project ends is frantic late nights at the office. Like a boiling kettle, you slowly turn up the heat for a week or two. Ratcheting up the ante, everyone is working overtime and battling to stay ahead of the deadline curve.

This is the most crucial part of a business leader’s professional life. You may not realize it but you are being tested by your employees and the environment you’re in. How do you get the most out of your employees at this late stage of the project? They are working hard, and they’re tired. Motivation and day-to-day determination can begin to falter. Some might respond to being shouted at and told to hurry up, but most will not. Wait until midday on a chosen day, it could be at the start of the week or halfway through it; perhaps both. Having a meeting to give your employees a situation report. Tell them how far they have to go, what has been achieved and what great things they have already done. Remind them of why you started this project, and what it will do for the business. Also, describe what it could mean for them personally, such as increasing their professional repertoire. Get them energized and fighting all the way to the finish.

Understand their capabilities

One of the most highly talked about topics regarding the boss and employee relationship is the understanding of capabilities. At least, this is talked about behind your back, that much you can be sure of. Employees begin to detest and hate their boss when he or she does not bother to learn about what it is they actually do. It’s all good and well for a business leader to tell employees what to do, but demanding too much when it’s not feasibly possible just stirs up resentment. It’s also venturing into the absurd because if an employee that is fantastic at what they do, and they work hard, long and fast, and they know that a task cannot be done in one hour and it will need two at the least, a boss shouldn’t even be demanding this from them.

Being a good boss means you know to some degree what your employees do. You don’t have to know what each employee’s resume is, but you should understand their capabilities just from looking at the work they produce for you. Sitting down with your managers and the directors of each department, you should get a monthly or quarterly report about employee performances. This way you can know how far you can push certain people and what kind of request is totally absurd. When employees are trying to climb over obstacles, they don’t need a boss screaming down their neck. They may be skilled, but they have and are encountering new problems and they are trying to solve them as they go along. If you hound them and make completely bizarre and illogical demands from them, they will either leave, stop talking with you freely or they will even contact the HR department. Learn to understand what they can and cannot do, and make demands in the realm of the possible instead of the impossible.

Avoiding mental fatigue

The complexities of running a business aside, you have to be aware that your most precious asset is your workers. It’s the human beings that are at their desks, working long hours, sending emails, answering phone calls, going out to talk to customers and clients, thinking up new marketing strategies and just about everything that makes a business great. If you have a decent group of workers numbering around 50 to 200 it can be easy to spot those that are having a little bit of trouble keeping up with the pace. Yet, if you have a business with many hundreds if not thousands of employees, it can be very difficult to spot those that are worn out and close to burning out. This can cause people to get frustrated over something simple not working, snap at employees and begin to feel you’re overworking them.

And yet, if every employer was to cave into their employees’ pressures or allow their employees to cave in to the pressure of the work environment all the time, you wouldn’t have a very effective business. Here are some ways of Defining The Rules Of Time-Off Requests to help you make an informed decision. Don’t just go by hearsay and don’t give time off to workers who haven’t written a formal request to you. There needs to be a log of who asked for the time off, when, why and for how long. This will help you to keep track of how many times an employee has needed time off from work and for what reason. You can pick up patterns and then establish reasons for why an individual wants time away from the office to rest and recuperate. However, sometimes there just isn’t a right time for employees to be away from the office unless they’re sick or attending an emergency. You might be heading into this fall and Christmas with a lacklustre performance throughout the year and this is a chance to make up for it. You might be at the end of a project and deadlines are just around the corner. It’s important to know when you can and should allow employees to take some time for themselves, while not jeopardizing the business in any way.

Personal mentoring

Leading a large number of people can get you lost in names and faces. The trouble is, sometimes you can’t put names to faces and the employees know this. Many feel as if they are just part of a machine and that despite their best efforts, you will forget them eventually. When you’re talking to the whole business, everyone knows their role. But, when you’re talking to someone one on one, you become someone they can open up to, have a real conversation with and find out things about each other.

Try to single off employees that you know are in need of some guidance, and encourage them with a motivational talk. Some might feel as if they aren’t sure what you want, and they will need a little more explaining of the project before you can get the best out of them. Personal mentoring of your employees will help to make them feel like an individual, and as if you know them and really care about what they do and who they are. Don’t forget that many are looking for promotions and want to impress you, so when they get a little alone time with the boss they feel appreciated.

There’s a fine line between being a tyrant and being someone who is firm and driven. Employees will follow someone they believe in. They will do for someone they fear and loathe. If you wish to secure the loyalty of your employees, then you need to always have time for one on one talks with each of them. Keep them motivated as the pressure builds up and there are deadlines to meet and projects to end. Understand their capabilities fully so you know how far you can push them before you demands begin to venture into the realm of the impossible.

This is a collaborative post.