Do Your Employees Hate You?
I am always focused on the customer and our relationship with them but the other key component to successfully building a reputationfor putting customers first is how your employees feel about the whole thing. Happy employees equal happy customers. “If mamma hate happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
In the book 30 Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers by Bruce Katcher I found that a number of the reasons employees hate their boss has to do with communication.
- “I’m afraid to speak up”
- “Management doesn’t listen to us”
- “They don’t tell me what I need to know to do my job”
I love the irony of the first two – you are afraid to speak up, but if you conquer your fears and speak up it doesn’t matter because they aren’t listening anyway.
Today’s quote in my Leadership widget that provides a quote to my iGoogle page each morning said this:
Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. ~ George S. Patton
Imagine if we did four things differently:
- Provided the whys and wherefores of the task at hand with all of the information necessary or information about who they need to go to for more clarification
- Asked employees for their thoughts
- Listened with interest
- Then let them have at it!
I wonder what impact that would have on our success and on the morale of our staff?
