Every Friday I write about a topic of particular interest to working parents who manage people.
During times of transition and uncertainty employees spend lots of time with each other complaining, conjecturing and generally not doing work. You know — those venting sessions that don’t go anywhere, but can take upwards of 30 minutes. It’s important to limit this kind of talk as much as possible for two big reasons: 1) it wastes time and 2) complaining begets poor morale and office intrigue.
So how do you discourage employees from spending too much time with each other worrying and griping about their jobs? Good managers lead by example. When morale is down, every little thing can fan the flames. Here are seven things good managers don’t do — especially during difficult times in the life of their department.
1. Have too many closed door meetings. Closing your office door suggests that you are doing one of three things: sharing secrets, reprimanding someone, or looking for a new job. Any one of these can affect morale in your office. Unless your discussion is of a very sensitive nature, leave your door open so that people can see who you are with and hear what you are talking about.
2. Have difficult conversations by email. Reprimanding someone, laying people off, or changing your department’s strategy, for example, should never be done by email. Doing things in person diffuses conflict and gives employees the opportunity to ask questions. In addition, you don’t want sensitive emails being forwarded in and out of the company out of context.
3. Bad-mouth one employee to another. It’s shocking how frequently this human resources 101 error happens. Whether intentionally or not, you promote office politics and negative competition by talking about one staff member to another. Usually managers who do this just need to talk with someone about the issue; if that’s the case go to human resources, or better yet a friend who is not affiliated with your company.
4. Cancel standing meetings frequently. We’ve all been in situations where a weekly or monthly meeting gets canceled or rescheduled so many times that it doesn’t happen for months on end. As a manager, you should have standing meetings with your direct reports. Canceling these over and over again suggests that their work is not important to you, and makes them take the meetings you do have — and the related deadlines — less seriously.
5. Use the “bcc” and “reply all” functions inappropriately. Along the lines of don’t have difficult conversations on email, secretly copying people and having long back and forths with a group can both be frustrating. Re. bcc, it’s much better to be open about who has what information so that there are no surprises. On the reply all front, if you have two or more differing responses, it’s probably a good idea to get everyone in a room to hammer out some clear next steps.
6. Over compliment. Sometimes when a manager is trying to improve morale they overcompensate by complimenting employees very publicly. This can be great if there is a real project that needs to be recognized (in which case al team members should be mentioned, if possible). But if you are just blowing smoke, don’t bother. People see right through this, and it doesn’t make them feel better.
7. Be absent or late. Your attendance sends signals to your staff about their own attitude towards work. If you are out frequently, you give people more opportunity to get together and complain in your absence. And lateness suggests that they too can come in after work hours begin. Your staff will follow your lead, so act as you would like them to act. Stepcase Lifehack has a good post on why punctuality matters here.
Related links:
- A good article on Management Techniques to Boost Employee Morale in a Down Economy from Women on Business.
- Technobuzz has 15 Killer Tips for Email Etiquette that I think are critical in the workplace.
- Real Relaxation’s 10 Tips to Relax in the Workplace actually has a lot of synergy with the list above — suggesting that good management can also lessen stress in the workplace in very simple ways.
- eHow has a good article on how to stop office gossip here.
