Most people rate time with their bosses as the worst time of their day. Consider what that means: interacting with their manager is less enjoyable than waking up to an early alarm, dealing with a rush-hour commute, or taking out the trash.
Depending on your own personal experience, you may find that surprising—or sadly obvious. Either way, this widespread dissatisfaction should not be ignored. Why? Employee productivity is directly related to an individual’s relationship with his or her supervisor.
A Harvard Business Review study that looked at nearly 3,000 leaders in a financial services company found that people assigned to the least effective of the group (managers rated in the bottom 10%) had satisfaction, engagement, and commitment levels that were lower than 96% of their colleagues. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the top 10% of leaders oversaw employees that were happier, more engaged, and more committed than 92% of the company’s employees. The correlation was clear, and theirs was not the only investigation to come to this conclusion.
Furthermore, studies have shown there’s not much you can offer in the way of perks to balance out the effects of a bad boss, and there’s a seemingly endless amount of rewards—from employee satisfaction to increased revenue—that can be derived from having a great one. While writing The Awakened Company, I interviewed many top CEOs who had come to the same conclusion. As a senior executive or business owner, finding and cultivating great leaders needs to be a priority.
So how do we make great leaders? Instead of self-preservation, separation, and isolation, we need to cultivate one-on-one relationships in organizations. That means doing more than relying on group meetings to interact with your team. You may be getting face time, but you aren’t getting the kind of quality time that leads to happy, engaged employees. Only by fostering these deeper connections can we create “Awakened relationships” that enable higher employee satisfaction, greater productivity, and broad company success. I personally see everyone in our organizations as colleagues, team members, and leaders.
Here are some ways to activate our relationships:
- Be heartful. We all have emotional bank accounts – we need 5 positives for every one negative remark. Let’s catch each other in the act of awesome, and in so doing people are likely to do what they are doing right again!
- Be mindful. Ask questions, get team members to think for themselves, if you are in a reactive space, consider taking a pause to be more responsive than reacting.
- Be spacious. Give people as much control over their work environments as possible. Let people have autonomy in their work.
Perhaps most importantly remember your relatedness in your relationships at work. That is to honour the humanity of the other person. We must separate out the role of people from the relatedness.
Other ideas include taking each member of your team out for lunch. If that’s not feasible with your schedule, try taking them out for tea. Making time to connect should be a priority, not a bonus. This can be achieved on a daily basis by recognizing your employees for what makes them unique and valued—comment on what makes them awesome. With an open heart and effort, you have the power to be the best part of their day.
