The Winning Trifecta of a Good Manager: Respect, Listening, and Fairness
7 February 2014
Read by 2449 persons
Most companies lack procedures to ensure fairness. Each value must be adapted to each employee's profile.
How do I motivate my team daily while respecting my company's budget constraints that prevent me from giving out bonuses every week? This question constantly arises during Dale Carnegie management training sessions. Sometimes, it's even the "manager" participants who ask us: "How can I, MYSELF, stay motivated with a disagreeable boss who never acknowledges good work and acts like we're still in the Middle Ages?"
To get a more "refined" and objective understanding of motivation, a B Marketing-La Vie éco-Dale Carnegie survey was conducted. The survey responses sometimes corroborate common manager beliefs, but they also offer surprises.
Thus, while motivating your team through financial incentives remains essential, the impact of a salary increase on the recipient's motivation is short-lived, at most 2 to 3 months, or even less. Can we, in this case, pull out the checkbook every time the team gets tired? Obviously not. In reality, it's up to the manager to motivate their team daily, systematically, not just occasionally. They must design, implement, and monitor a real motivation plan!
To do this, the survey gives us keys, concerning two essential areas of management: procedures and management methods.
Procedures
Ensuring fairness within the team requires simple, clear procedures that everyone understands. Bonuses and salary increases should be awarded based on pre-defined criteria and deadlines. The same applies to the small HR actions we perform daily: flexibility regarding absenteeism, granting vacation dates, access to vacation centers, credits, and equipment/office supplies. But what do we actually observe regarding these procedures? Most companies don't have them, and everything is done at best based on feeling, at worst, through favoritism. Result? A significant drop in productivity because the best are discouraged and quickly contaminated by the less good who benefit from the system! Furthermore, the company's "attractiveness" to young high-potential recruits drops irremediably!
That's why, today, more and more companies are starting to adopt relevant tools in this area and accompany them with training to help users optimize their new approach. It remains to ensure good communication about these procedures and to update them when they lose their relevance!
Management Methods
Those surveyed emphasized their manager's behavior as a motivating or demotivating factor! But how can we ensure that management behavior meets the company's expectations regarding team motivation?
First of all, by verbalizing these expectations through the company's values charter! It's true that most companies today have beautiful values charters, displayed in elevators and corridors, but what about reality?
Verifying that the values of the charter are understood by all
During the various workshops we've led on this subject, we've noticed that these values can lead to many misunderstandings! Indeed, if we take the value of transparency, some employees with insufficient maturity interpret it as: "We must be aware of everything within the company." Others confuse equity (everyone will be judged on the same criteria, but only three will be awarded at the end of the race) and equality (everyone will receive a medal at the end of the race)! Therefore, once the values have been identified, it's important to ensure that they are "read" and applied in the same and correct way!
Work atmosphere is linked to the manager's behavior
Returning to the survey, what are the most frequently cited values? "Respect," "fairness," "listening," "appreciation," "recognition." In the background, especially for senior managers, "career prospects" and, for all categories, "work atmosphere." However, the means to improve the latter are directly linked to the manager's behavior. For example: respect. However, we must agree on the value of respect: saying "hello" in the morning, "please," but confining your teams to menial tasks, not listening to their suggestions, not taking the time to listen to them, is this really respecting them?
Employees are the most important "clients"
Furthermore, each value must be adapted to each employee's profile: the charter is the fabric coupon; it's up to the manager to tailor the suit according to the type of person they have to manage! This requires the manager to integrate an essential element: in addition to their end clients, management clients, and shareholder clients, they must add their employee clients, in most cases the MOST important clients for them! They must therefore dedicate the necessary time to learning how to decipher each member of their team as they would do with their prospect file! A manager with a closed door and closed ears will have little chance of knowing their team and thus knowing how to adapt each value to each profile.
Similarly, and quite coherently, the main reasons cited in the survey concerning professional demotivation are:
- Lack of respect: 30%
- Lack of appreciation, recognition: 27.8%
- Poor work atmosphere: 20.5%
And who is the main responsible? Once again, direct and indirect management! Ask a professional with 10 years of experience in the company to use a new computer application; you will certainly encounter explicit resistance. Now ask this same person to manage their team differently by listening more, prioritizing participative decision-making and highlighting everyone's results, and you will encounter the worst barrier: the invisible one, hidden behind "of course, it's very important to be close to the team, to listen to them," without any concrete action following, or worse, a few... demagogic actions! Why?
Lack of trust between different hierarchical levels
First reason: because there is a real lack of trust between the different hierarchical levels within the company: the management committee, with its knowledge of small and large secrets and the company's strategy, the intermediate management which, due to buyouts, mergers, etc., no longer knows who to listen to, and finally, the "little people" who simply keep their heads down, waiting for it to "pass."
Second reason: because, quite simply, some managers don't know how to manage their teams otherwise.
The consequences are dire and far more costly than one might imagine. And behind the answers about the consequences of demotivation - "poor quality of work" (50.8% of the responses) and "disinterest in work" (45.6%) - lie economic disasters: errors, production disruptions, drop in productivity, ultimately leading to resignation (24%). Immediate effect: the company's lack of attractiveness! Indeed, the best recruits will go to a structured company with an established value system and procedures, and only those who have no other choice will remain.
Regarding what respondents consider to be the main managerial qualities, they correspond exactly to what we observe daily in the field: a respectful, polite, and kind manager (38%) is appreciated, as is one who listens (33.6%).
And among the main manager's flaws: favoritism, inequity at 17.6%, lack of respect at 16%.
Thus, if we want to summarize the winning trio: respect, listening, and fairness, we arrive at "profiling" the ideal manager (see box).
Yasmina Chbani.
Lavieeco.com
Posted online February 7, 2014.
How do I motivate my team daily while respecting my company's budget constraints that prevent me from giving out bonuses every week? This question constantly arises during Dale Carnegie management training sessions. Sometimes, it's even the "manager" participants who ask us: "How can I, MYSELF, stay motivated with a disagreeable boss who never acknowledges good work and acts like we're still in the Middle Ages?"
To get a more "refined" and objective understanding of motivation, a B Marketing-La Vie éco-Dale Carnegie survey was conducted. The survey responses sometimes corroborate common manager beliefs, but they also offer surprises.
Thus, while motivating your team through financial incentives remains essential, the impact of a salary increase on the recipient's motivation is short-lived, at most 2 to 3 months, or even less. Can we, in this case, pull out the checkbook every time the team gets tired? Obviously not. In reality, it's up to the manager to motivate their team daily, systematically, not just occasionally. They must design, implement, and monitor a real motivation plan!
To do this, the survey gives us keys, concerning two essential areas of management: procedures and management methods.
Procedures
Ensuring fairness within the team requires simple, clear procedures that everyone understands. Bonuses and salary increases should be awarded based on pre-defined criteria and deadlines. The same applies to the small HR actions we perform daily: flexibility regarding absenteeism, granting vacation dates, access to vacation centers, credits, and equipment/office supplies. But what do we actually observe regarding these procedures? Most companies don't have them, and everything is done at best based on feeling, at worst, through favoritism. Result? A significant drop in productivity because the best are discouraged and quickly contaminated by the less good who benefit from the system! Furthermore, the company's "attractiveness" to young high-potential recruits drops irremediably!
That's why, today, more and more companies are starting to adopt relevant tools in this area and accompany them with training to help users optimize their new approach. It remains to ensure good communication about these procedures and to update them when they lose their relevance!
Management Methods
Those surveyed emphasized their manager's behavior as a motivating or demotivating factor! But how can we ensure that management behavior meets the company's expectations regarding team motivation?
First of all, by verbalizing these expectations through the company's values charter! It's true that most companies today have beautiful values charters, displayed in elevators and corridors, but what about reality?
Verifying that the values of the charter are understood by all
During the various workshops we've led on this subject, we've noticed that these values can lead to many misunderstandings! Indeed, if we take the value of transparency, some employees with insufficient maturity interpret it as: "We must be aware of everything within the company." Others confuse equity (everyone will be judged on the same criteria, but only three will be awarded at the end of the race) and equality (everyone will receive a medal at the end of the race)! Therefore, once the values have been identified, it's important to ensure that they are "read" and applied in the same and correct way!
Work atmosphere is linked to the manager's behavior
Returning to the survey, what are the most frequently cited values? "Respect," "fairness," "listening," "appreciation," "recognition." In the background, especially for senior managers, "career prospects" and, for all categories, "work atmosphere." However, the means to improve the latter are directly linked to the manager's behavior. For example: respect. However, we must agree on the value of respect: saying "hello" in the morning, "please," but confining your teams to menial tasks, not listening to their suggestions, not taking the time to listen to them, is this really respecting them?
Employees are the most important "clients"
Furthermore, each value must be adapted to each employee's profile: the charter is the fabric coupon; it's up to the manager to tailor the suit according to the type of person they have to manage! This requires the manager to integrate an essential element: in addition to their end clients, management clients, and shareholder clients, they must add their employee clients, in most cases the MOST important clients for them! They must therefore dedicate the necessary time to learning how to decipher each member of their team as they would do with their prospect file! A manager with a closed door and closed ears will have little chance of knowing their team and thus knowing how to adapt each value to each profile.
Similarly, and quite coherently, the main reasons cited in the survey concerning professional demotivation are:
- Lack of respect: 30%
- Lack of appreciation, recognition: 27.8%
- Poor work atmosphere: 20.5%
And who is the main responsible? Once again, direct and indirect management! Ask a professional with 10 years of experience in the company to use a new computer application; you will certainly encounter explicit resistance. Now ask this same person to manage their team differently by listening more, prioritizing participative decision-making and highlighting everyone's results, and you will encounter the worst barrier: the invisible one, hidden behind "of course, it's very important to be close to the team, to listen to them," without any concrete action following, or worse, a few... demagogic actions! Why?
Lack of trust between different hierarchical levels
First reason: because there is a real lack of trust between the different hierarchical levels within the company: the management committee, with its knowledge of small and large secrets and the company's strategy, the intermediate management which, due to buyouts, mergers, etc., no longer knows who to listen to, and finally, the "little people" who simply keep their heads down, waiting for it to "pass."
Second reason: because, quite simply, some managers don't know how to manage their teams otherwise.
The consequences are dire and far more costly than one might imagine. And behind the answers about the consequences of demotivation - "poor quality of work" (50.8% of the responses) and "disinterest in work" (45.6%) - lie economic disasters: errors, production disruptions, drop in productivity, ultimately leading to resignation (24%). Immediate effect: the company's lack of attractiveness! Indeed, the best recruits will go to a structured company with an established value system and procedures, and only those who have no other choice will remain.
Regarding what respondents consider to be the main managerial qualities, they correspond exactly to what we observe daily in the field: a respectful, polite, and kind manager (38%) is appreciated, as is one who listens (33.6%).
And among the main manager's flaws: favoritism, inequity at 17.6%, lack of respect at 16%.
Thus, if we want to summarize the winning trio: respect, listening, and fairness, we arrive at "profiling" the ideal manager (see box).
Yasmina Chbani.
Lavieeco.com
Posted online February 7, 2014.
