Recently, I was interviewed for a leadership podcast, and the question that caused me to reflect on a lifetime of leading was: How do you show you care for your employees?
I landed six key actions:
First and foremost, the easiest and most important thing is to connect them to the organization’s mission and objectives simply and articulately.
How: Explain in respectful and appropriate language how each person’s work contributes to the success of the entire team
Two, a significant level of trust and confidence in them, and in return, you will get that back.
How: Explain what’s happening. I think leaders, not because of ill-will, don’t want to worry and therefore don’t, so they’re not going to tell the whole truth about what’s happening around them.
And one of my consultancy clients was laying off people, because of economic reasons; there wasn’t enough work. It wasn’t stopped telling people what was happening and why the project ended, and there was no work.
People saw that the people in charge had stopped communicating, and their coworkers just disappeared. They began to assume that the company was in big trouble. The company was financially solid, still making a profit, had good sales and lots of potential work in the pipeline.
I coached the president to hold town halls and open the books as much as possible, which was happening, to give people confidence that the company was solid.
Read more about talking to you people in tough times
Three, get off your butt, get out of your office, and see how people are working. Ask them what’s going on in their workplace and show a little empathy.
How: Find out what’s going on, fix the problems, be empathetic with people, and that’s as simple as that.
During one of my walk-arounds, I learned that a young lady working for me had a chance for a scholarship to attend nursing school. She couldn’t afford to travel; the company covered the cost of a hotel in Vancouver for the application interview.
I didn’t have to do that. Didn’t trust me, that the word got spread that I helped her with this, and suddenly, people thought, “If they’re going to do that, they’ll help me out,” they’ll gain loyalty, and trust will go up.
Fourth, deal with poor performance. Nothing will demoralize you people quicker than seeing a coworker get away with poor performance.
How: Pull your big boy or girl pants up and deal with poor performance.
No one comes to work wanting to do a bad job, create the desired expectations, provide the resources required for that person to improve, and monitor, mentor and support the behaviours you expect.
You are the bosses, and eventually, you will have to bring people up to the standard of performance or move them, respectfully, out of the organization.
Learn more about performance agreements.
Fifth, have a little class and dignity.
How: People are not stupid or unrealistic; they understand that when times get tough, layoffs may have to happen. But that is not a license to treat people like so much trash being kicked to the curb.
Even if you have to fire somebody, make sure that everyone sees that person being treated fairly and with respect. That translates onto the shop floor or the rest of the office or the rest of the team, or they go, “You know what, they treated that guy okay, so maybe they will look after me.
Finally, do the things no one would miss if you didn’t do them.
How: When I didn’t learn that someone on my team had a death in their family, I always sent flowers from the organization and the team.
The cost? $30
… $30 for a little bit of caring.
It is those low-cost yet critical little things that become exponentially important to that person and the rest of your team.