From my experience, I can suggest that simple Respect pays huge dividends.
Treating employees like humans; getting to know each one as an individual, and sincerely working to help each of them to achieve their personal goals. Treating their work with Respect is also really important.
I was a manager at a company that paid "competitive" (i.e. "low") salaries, and had to motivate with "softer" rewards.
I've always been a "carrot" person, as opposed to a "stick" person. I find that it's better (but not easier) to lead folks with rewards, than it is to drive them with threats. I also found that money is a fickle motivator. It works well, if you want transient, highly-capable people that will not stick around, and will not be there, when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.
But I have also found that I'm an outlier, and that my style of management is not only ignored, but attacked and despised.
I'm pretty happy to be out of the Rotten Management Rat Race.
You say this, but money is also part of respect. Many employers do not index raises to inflation, so you're literally working for less each year you stay with that employer. Yes, you absolutely need to treat employees like humans and not numbers, but compensation is part of the respect you show employees. Ignore it at your peril.
> It works well, if you want transient, highly-capable people that will not stick around, and will not be there, when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.
Anecdotally, the most capable people I have worked with are there to solve problems, and if they run into a problem that can't be solved (mostly because of organisation politics/culture) then they recognise the futility of trying and move on.
Not being there when the excrement hits the fan is just a byproduct of not sticking around in a dysfunctional environment.
Agreed. Many companies push non-monetary HR stuff, in an effort to keep salaries low. That's usually pretty transparent, though.
In the end, there's absolutely nothing that can fix broken management; especially the first- and second-line managers.
I found management to be a very difficult and humbling experience. The variable was usually me; not the employee. I had to be constantly reviewing my own motivations and whatnot.
> Anecdotally, the most capable people I have worked with are there to solve problems, and if they run into a problem that can't be solved (mostly because of organisation politics/culture) then they recognise the futility of trying and move on.
One of my jobs, as a first-line manager, was to shield my employees from the corporate culture. I managed highly experienced C++ engineers, working on pretty advanced image processing pipeline stuff. Not exactly your "bootcamp leetcode master" type. When they finally rolled up our department, the engineer with the least tenure, had ten years, and we were never really paid that well.
But I have had many folks, on this very forum, tell me what a terrible manager I must have been.
But I had to fight like crazy to get them raises and promotions. I have to admit that I sometimes did less than I would have liked.
I was often instructed to reduce the positive scores of my employees. It was infuriating. They did good, they deserved praise, even with the best score possible, their raise would not have been that great.
I almost never got a good score, myself, but they also kept me for almost 27 years.
Spot on. You remunerate people based how much respect you have for them and what esteem you hold for them. If your company pays you less than you’re worth, then they clearly don’t value you.
Very few people would show up to work without the money. Let’s stop pretending they would.
You seem to be asserting "Respect" here as a counterpoint to higher pay. I have to say that personally I like the "respect" of higher pay. I completely lack interest in the aspects of "respect" that end up expressed as praise, or chummyness. I'm not a dog.
You sound a bit like my boss of the past 11 years. He's a big reason why I stick around with a company I otherwise have no attachment to. He's reasonable, he treats us like human beings first, he values our time almost as much as we do, etc. Which is kind of amazing considering he himself is a workaholic. If something goes wrong I know hes more interested in fixing it and preventing it in the future than he is blaming anyone. So even though I was probably not going to be much help, I was willing to stick around until 10pm during a software deployment that was going badly just in case something in my wheelhouse came up.
This resonates with me. Also in management with a similar style. However, I'd like to take a little tangent from there in case you'd want to elaborate on what it means to "get to know" people as part of the humanistic approach.
One of the ways that I've learned to practice respect is actually not really getting to know people personally too much. I've been manipulated before by "leaders" who try to use personal information like family needs or other goals as a fake carrot that is not in their power to exchange. As a result I have a pretty "no questions asked" policy on the privacy rights of my direct reports when it comes to approving any time off or facilitating whatever it is they want to do with their careers, and it doesn't require "getting to know them" beyond their own voluntary sharing in private. Sometimes it will grow into a closer relationship but it totally doesn't have to.
Maybe it's an extreme reaction to the bad taste from interacting with folks who like to pretend that work is a family. I just don't trust workplaces enough to be fully vulnerable anymore, and by extension would never demand that another employee be unconditionally trusting with their full humanity, because it is never a two-way street. When the company wants to mess with livelihoods it does not need to seek permission, so it is unfair to ask for the disclosure of personal information beyond what is necessary to carry out the work.
For just one more recent example, I fell for the advertised inclusive corporate culture by putting my pronouns on my Slack profile (having never been publicly out as a queer person at work before), I experienced weird behaviours from people that made it harder to do my job normally. So I ended up going back into the workplace closet because it's just easier to project what "regular" folks want to see in order to solve problems efficiently.
I'd love to hear your take on healthy boundaries, because sometimes I wish there could be more connection with people in the workplace besides the naturally occurring camaraderie that arises through direct collaboration and the inevitable small handful of friends with similar values. Is it possible to have a deeper connection with everyone as a general approach?
I never asked, but always listened, and respected whatever the employee wanted to share. I have personal (extracurricular) experience in an organization that has given me a particularly useful approach to sensitive life stuff. I also shared a lot of what I was going through (but not all). That's often a great way to "break the ice."
I saw my employees through a lot of life's challenges, like cancer, marriage, divorce, child issues, elder issues, whatever. I made sure that we could keep working as a team, even if it meant that one of the members may have had to opt out for a while.
I also withheld information from HR, that they would have liked to have had, because, quite frankly, it was none of their damn business. It did not always endear me to them. I kept secrets, and never used anything I learned to manipulate, but I did use it to optimize.
For example, I had one engineer that is "on the spectrum." He Just. Could. Not. Come. In. Before. Noon. to save his life, but often worked until 2AM.
Also, the code he wrote was nothing short of miraculous. He's possibly the best coder I've ever worked with.
HR wanted me to bully him into submission. I did not, and they were un-thrilled with me. But Japan loved him, and they held the upper hand.
It wasn't for everyone, but we made it work.
I feel that "one size fits all" solutions may be necessary for large organizations, but I had the luxury of managing a small team (never more than 10 people). Everyone involved was serious about the work, had pride in the company, and appreciated the leeway I gave them. My LI profile has a number of testimonials, and some are from former employees. To this day, we still keep in touch.
Because of the nature of the work we did, there was no way for "slackers" to hide. Everyone's work was just too visible.
As a manager, my #1 priority was always to represent what was best for the corporation. In some cases, that meant preventing the corporation from engaging in self-destructive behavior. Now, that is a classic "slippery slope," and it could have easily turned into self-will run riot, but it didn't; because I'm who I am.
Managers aren't cookies, and they can't be formed from cookie-cutters, no matter what the "HR Consultants" say.
Thanks! Great points about leading with some of our own vulnerability as a way to create psychological safety. Refusing bad direction to protect the team is always hard, because it carries the burden of articulating how that protection is better for the company as a whole, which means politics and either CYA records or face saving flattery that is somewhat degrading for the manager to have to do. You sound like a good person to work with.
I did my best. I do tend to expect top-shelf results (as opposed to "effort"), though, which does not always win me fans (but the company I worked for, expected nothing less).
Agree with you a lot. Especially about that style of management being attacked.
It’s easier to manage when all you do is assign work, reward with money and blame silent quiting, millennials, or whatever the latest cause of people “just not working enough”.
As opposed to actually caring about your staff, making sure the work is fulfilling and that the team are bought into what they are doing at an individual level.
Leading shouldn’t be about what makes it easier for the manager.
Treating employees like humans; getting to know each one as an individual, and sincerely working to help each of them to achieve their personal goals. Treating their work with Respect is also really important.
I was a manager at a company that paid "competitive" (i.e. "low") salaries, and had to motivate with "softer" rewards.
I've always been a "carrot" person, as opposed to a "stick" person. I find that it's better (but not easier) to lead folks with rewards, than it is to drive them with threats. I also found that money is a fickle motivator. It works well, if you want transient, highly-capable people that will not stick around, and will not be there, when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.
But I have also found that I'm an outlier, and that my style of management is not only ignored, but attacked and despised.
I'm pretty happy to be out of the Rotten Management Rat Race.