We often hear about the need for bosses to do more to engage with their teams. The boss looks at their schedule and then just checks out of that idea right then and there because it seems impossible. The employees for their part, want to get more praise and recognition from the boss, to feel valuable and valued. Bosses are often Driver type personalities who are extremely outcome and task orientated. People are there to produce, to get the numbers, to complete projects and to do it with a minimum of boss maintenance needed to be invested.
The snag in all of this though is employees don’t want that. They want the boss to be more interested in them, their career and their family. The feeling of being valued by the boss has been found to be an important trigger to create strong engagement in staff. Driver bosses rarely pull that trigger. They believe you need to “harden up baby”, do it yourself “like I did”. They wonder why we need to mollycoddle this lot.
In fact they don’t know how to snuggle up to staff and get to know them, because they never experienced that from their own bosses, and they are not built that way. They grew up independent and self-reliant. They are driven to achieve and have a take no prisoners approach to business. They are survival of the fittest advocates. Consequently, they are not much for small talk. They are permanently time pressed, so everything has to be driving toward an outcome, or it is a waste of their valuable time.
How do you snuggle up to employees anyway? Bosses need to engage with their staff by using the “innerview” to deepen their understanding of who the person is who works for them, what are their motivations and interests. The sceptics may be thinking “brilliant”. Now they can interrogate their staff, find and start pressing their hot buttons, to get more production out of them having found some keys to staff motivation. This is not what we are talking about. Staff can spot this very quickly. They won’t be interested in being manipulated by their bosses for higher productivity gains.
The effort is to get to know the team better, so that as the boss you can help them to succeed in their work by aligning their goals, interests and motivations with those of the organization. The classic win/win.
Getting to know staff starts with asking basic factual questions. Where did they grow up, where did they go to school, what did they major in. Where have they worked in the past, what are their hobbies, how many in their family etc.
To go deeper we need to ask causative questions. The “why” of their choices. Why did they pick that field of study, why that school, why this company, why that hobby, etc.
Then we get to values-based questions. Getting to know how they tick. If you had your life over again would you do things differently and if so , what would you do? What were some turning points in your life? What have been some of the work and non-work related things you have done that have made you feel proud? If you were giving advice to a person entering the workforce what would that be?
These questions have to be asked in a relaxed manner, not spewed out like machine gun fire. This is getting to know someone better in order to better be able to appreciate them as a person. It is not a drill in shaking them down for private information, which can be used later to exploit them.
Conversations like this, done correctly, invite massive mutual understanding. The end result is better communication and shared values. A uniting of mutual interests toward achieving goals together. So all of you driver bosses out there, this is how to get cuddly with the team.
First sort out your objective and make sure it is reflecting the real interests of the staff. Drop that manipulation thing. Then make the time available to have a deep one on one conversation with another human being who also exists on this planet just like you. Believe me, good things will flow from this.
