The manager, team leader, or executive can make employees so happy and so hard working by changing just one thing.
Forget buying lunches for the whole team (not a bad idea!).
Forget giving them free dry cleaning (not bad also!).
Forget holding a fun day for the team (not too bad an idea also!).
Something has to happen daily that helps the team.
Every day!
It has to be simple!
The answer for every manager is a simple step, it is free, and almost no one does it!
It is an old concept yet infrequently practiced.
It used to be known as MBWA – Management By Walking Around.
I have a new name: MBF – Management By Friendship
Before all you old-timers (l know…I am an old timer) start giggling and guffawing, let me explain.
When I started in the work world over 30 years ago, I was told never to make friends with the people you manage. Build a wall between yourself and your employees – that idea does not work today.
This is where it gets weird…
Taking time for meeting the employees is your work as a manager. Doing the paperwork and other administrative activities is secondary to spending time with the employees. Yes, I do realize sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming and requires your focus over everything.
But, it is my opinion (and I have done it), you can put many administrative tasks on other team members while you focus on each team member.
The real problem is that many managers don’t want to spend time talking to each team member. I was confused by this but after talking with many managers, I think I found the answer.
Many managers come from the workforce where they were used to performing tasks rather than leading people. There is a great satisfaction in doing tasks that have a clear start and end. When you move away from the worker bee level, you lose that feeling of completion of tasks.
Welcome to management! You no longer are working on specified tasks but you are leading people, which is an extremely important job.
Leading people is a wonderfully rewarding job but it is different from completing tasks. You need to get your satisfaction from other parts of the management job and not from completing specific tasks.
If this is your first management job, it is a fun career! I love managing people but be prepared for a radically different life. It is going to be fun!