Low Morale At Work? Poor Management Is To Blame

I’ve worked at a half dozen dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies in my career so far, fill­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent roles and hold­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of senior­ity. But look­ing back those com­pa­nies and jobs in the abstract, it’s sur­pris­ing how many ele­ments in com­mon they have. One par­tic­u­lar ele­ment that I’ve seen again and again is a fail­ure of man­age­ment to actu­ally manage.

I won­der how many of your read­ing have expe­ri­enced or have friends who have had to suf­fer a bad man­ager. Maybe they micro-manage (a com­mon com­plaint that I hear), or per­haps they bring their per­sonal life to work and let it affect how they treat peo­ple. Are they con­vinced they have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the sub­ject than they actu­ally do, or do they sim­ply fail to rec­og­nize the unrea­son­able expec­ta­tions they are plac­ing on their employees.

It is this behav­ior, not poor pay or office pol­i­tics which is the biggest cause of low morale in the work place. That low morale reduces pro­duc­tiv­ity, causes employee turnover (which fur­ther reduces pro­duc­tiv­ity) and is gen­er­ally counter-productive for the com­pany. And yet it is being caused by the peo­ple who are being paid specif­i­cally to make things run efficiently.

Employ­ers aren’t com­pletely obliv­i­ous to this of course, but their solu­tions fre­quently miss the point. The occa­sional free meal might perk peo­ple up for a day or two but it addresses the symp­toms not the dis­ease. Cor­po­rate “team-building” exer­cises and “frank exchanges” between employ­ees and man­age­ment won’t change any­thing if the man­age­ment team can’t accept where the fault actu­ally lies.

And it pri­mar­ily lies with poor man­age­ment. A good man­ager is not a drill sergeant. A com­pany is not the army. Good man­age­ment isn’t even dif­fi­cult. Actu­ally it’s eas­ier than bad man­age­ment because you have peo­ple actively help­ing you.

The prin­ci­ples of good man­age­ment don’t change whether you’re a low level man­ager like myself or the CEO of a major cor­po­ra­tion. Fol­low these sim­ple steps and your employ­ees will be hap­pier. Happy employ­ees make you more money.

Prin­ci­ples of Good Management:

1. Lis­ten To Your Staff
   Com­pa­nies employ peo­ple, not robots. So treat them like peo­ple. I know you’re busy. You have a dozen things to do and only time for half of them. Doesn’t mat­ter. If one of your team comes to you, make the time to talk to them. Even if it’s not directly work related. Employ­ees that believe you are inter­ested in what they have to say and care about their lives will work much harder than those who are sim­ply there to pick up the money. I know, I’ve been both types.
2. Your Job Is To Facil­i­tate Your Staff
   You’re a man­ager. That means you’re not sup­posed to be doing the job (most of the time) you’re sup­posed to be arrang­ing so the peo­ple who work for you can do the job. So tell them what you need them to do and when you need it done by. Then get out the way! Unless their behav­ior is unpro­fes­sional or they fail to get the assigned work done, there’s no need to stress over exactly how they choose to per­form the task. If they need your help they will ask for it. See prin­ci­ple #1.
3. Know That You’re Not Always Right
   I have a run­ning joke with my team that I’m “always right”. It’s funny because I’m right quite a lot, but I’m also wrong every day. I know it and they know it. If you can acknowl­edge your mis­takes then your team will speak up and pre­vent you from mak­ing most of them. If you can’t, they’ll stay quiet.
4. Trust Your Staff
   There’s no need to keep check­ing up on an employee if they’re get­ting their job done. Hov­er­ing over their shoul­der will just stress them (once again low­er­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity). If they’re not get­ting their job done you can attempt to edu­cate them and if that doesn’t work. You have the wrong employee.
5. It’s Not Per­sonal, It’s Busi­ness
   Employ­ees will get job offers and may wish to move to another com­pany. It’s not per­sonal. Don’t make it per­sonal. Do your best to keep them, but fail­ing that help them to leave on good terms. If you have to give some­one a warn­ing, don’t take it easy on them because you’re wor­ried they may not like what you’re say­ing. It’s not personal.

   Con­versely keep your per­sonal life away from work. It’s not your staff’s fault that you just had a huge argu­ment with your wife. Don’t take it out on them.

6. Explain, Edu­cate, Inform
   You hold your posi­tion because you have a level of exper­tise in your field. Don’t hoard that knowl­edge. Spread it around. When you make deci­sions, explain why. Every step of the way tell peo­ple your rea­son­ing. Next time they may be able to apply the same process with­out hav­ing to take up your time. If you don’t explain peo­ple are liable to think that your deci­sions are lit­tle more than ran­dom whims.

And that’s it. Fol­low those prin­ci­ples and you’ll end up with a team of enthu­si­as­tic, capa­ble and moti­vated peo­ple who are not only get­ting the work done, but actively help­ing you to man­age them.

Related arti­cles by Zemanta

• You’re the Man­ager. So Man­age. (iowabiz​.com)
• 5 Tips for Effec­tive Del­e­ga­tion (ism​cken​zie​.com)
• The trust bureau­cracy (social​me​di​a​to​day​.com)
• Should Sub­or­di­nates Inter­view Poten­tial Bosses? (usnews​.com)
• Employ­ees’ as an Over­looked Resource: 5 Ways to Equip Employ­ees to Help with Mar­ket­ing (mpdai​ly​fix​.com)