Beer glasses, commodes and building a relationship of trust.

I was a little overwhelmed, however very happy with the positive response to my first blog. Thanks you to those who reached out to me via email, comments and in person.  I did receive several requests to expand on the idea of relationship building between managers and staff. I‘m happy to do that as it clearly falls within my passion of building business. 

I read somewhere online that you should never report to anyone who you wouldn’t go out with after work and have a beer. Although intrigued, at first read this made me a little uncomfortable. What did a beer and wings have to do with a professional working relationship?  You wouldn’t see me doing this with my staff members. The more I thought it about I began to see what it was really driving at. It was not to be taken literal as if to say that clanging beer glasses after closing the big deal would yield the best of relationships, but rather that the concept here is the comfort factor between the manager and the team member.

  

The good leader is always alert to ways to connect with their staff. Some of the more unusual seem to work the best. In my current employment, I do not sit in the office suite. My office is located right on the working floor and shares a common wall with the restrooms. Each time a person pulls paper towels from the dispenser roll or flushes a commode, I hear all about it. At first I was a little put off by the arrangement; however it very quickly became apparent that my direct reports as well as other manager’s direct reports thought it was endearing. I could hear them talking amongst themselves about the awkward sounds that sometimes disturbed meetings in my office and the way we all laughed about it and then carried on with our business. “He’s one of us to put up with that” I overheard one day. From that time on it became a little running joke and I never complained. I actually used it to breakdown manager/staff barriers and as a building block for stronger relationships.

The key point here is that developing a relationship with your staff is no longer just nice, it is necessary. Leaders must be sincere, authentic and genuine. Admit what you don’t know, teach what you do know. Take interest in the baby pictures, the baseball scores and the vacation plans. Yes it does take a little more work, but the dividends it pays in retention, engagement, morale and increased productivity are well worth it.