Manage My Employees

Short Article #29

“What do you think?” asked the manager to her employee. Surprised, the employee responded, “Well, I don’t know if this would work or not but I think…”

Those four words posed in the question, “What do you think?” may be more telling of one’s management style than any other sign.

Why? Here are four possible reasons, you may want to add one in a comment yourself:

• It’s a sign of whether you genuinely care to hear the opinions of others, or just want to appear like you do.
• It’s a sign of whether you lead by “getting others to want to do” OR “getting others to do” what you believe should be done.

• It’s a sign of whether you tend to lead by “the power of influence” or by “the power of authority”
• It’s a sign of wisdom or hubris, frankly. Wisdom recognizes she never knows it all and needs the regular input of others. Hubris, first-cousin of pride, believes that twenty, thirty, whatever-plus-years of experience far outweighs and overshadows anything it might possibly learn from a far less experienced staffer.

Listen to your people. Engage them. Shape attitudes. Inspire performance. All are made more likely when we truly want to know, and ask people for, their thoughts, opinions or ideas.

The story is told of a man who was retiring from working forty years on an assembly line. At his retirement party, in a room full of his peers and management, the man was asked to say a few words:

“For forty years you got my shoulders down, working that assembly line getting the job done. Instead, for forty years, you could have got my mind too, but you never asked.”