How to be the Leader People Love to See
Spending time with their manager is the worst part of the day for employees. What makes managers so un-delightful? Managers are unintentionally malevolent when they have an agenda that has nothing to do with people.
Bores always have a personal agenda. When un-delightful managers ask questions, you wonder what they really want.
Leadership success requires curiosity that extends beyond results.
People love to see leaders who love people.
We all know you don’t care about people when results are all you talk about. Leaders who only ask about results are uninteresting, short-sighted, self-serving, self-absorbed energy sucks.
Ask questions that strengthen relationships:
Questions about people:
- What interests team members outside of work?
- What do people do for fun?
- How did your team members get into their line of work?
- Who are the rising stars on your team? How can you support and challenge them?
- Who is performing below expectation? How will you seek their best interest?
- How might you support people?
- Who needs a new challenge?
Questions about challenges:
- What’s keeping you up at night?
- If things were better, what would it look like?
- What small step in the right direction can you take today?
Questions about successes:
- Where are you seeing progress?
- What do you think is causing progress?
- What’s working?
Questions about the future:
- What will make tomorrow better than today for you?
- If things fall apart, what will you have neglected to do?
- What three things could you do to make next week better than this week? How can I help?
Genuine questions set direction.
Energy shrivels when problems, complaints, and falling short are the recurring topic of conversation. But a good question ignites vitality.
How might leaders demonstrate their love for people?
What questions strengthen relationships?
excellent suggestions as always. thanks Dan
Thank you Nagarajan.
I think the most effective leaders have the appropriate balance between being focused on the task (work to be done) and focused on the people (their goals, challenges, growth, proud moments, etc.).
Thanks Paul. Yes… sometime I think of it as challenge/support. People have to believe that you believe in them and you have their best interest in mind. People also need to believe that performance matters. It’s not all hand holding.
These are great suggestions for questions about challenges and successes. Not only are they applicable to ask others, but also ask ourselves. I’ve been reading your blog for over 5 years – leadership in its non-managerial form is something we are all responsible for. But I’m about to step into my first people-management role on a marketing solutionist team (we troubleshoot and manage the fix process for the techy stuff of marketing) and I’m going to bookmark these questions for immediate use 🙂 Thank you once again!
Congratulations Taber. I wish you success in your new role! It’s a pleasure to be useful.
As a school leader, I find that building connections and relationships is an essential foundation for coaching and growth opportunities. I enjoy getting to know my teams by finding opportunities for non-school-related check-ins during unstructured time. I use my calendar to remind me to follow up when needed (“hey, how did your mom’s surgery go?”) and this personal connection then serves us all.
I appreciate the easy-to-use “cheat sheet” that you provide. These are wonderful questions! I especially appreciate the questions about success. We so often focus on what is not working and neglect to see what makes things work well.
Dear Dan,
An interesting thought-provoking post! As leaders, we need to be people-centric and try to assess performance with a pragmatic approach. People perform much better with good encouragement, praise and the required guidance. A good human touch is always welcome by employees yet they can be pointed where they are going wrong and how best they can tackle difficult situations at work.
Task-oriented leaders are quite tough in their approach and want people to perform under a fear psychosis. This is undesirable and can distort the organization culture of togetherness and collective happiness with planned performance.
It is so easy to lose sight of employees outside of work, these questions mean we care for our employees. How to find the right time to ask these questions is the key. How do I get started? I am the Human Resources Manager for a cleaning company and most of our employees work in the field.
Hi Dan, this blog reminds me of the work done by Gallup on employee engagement. Engaging authentically is the difference-maker in my view, and asking the right questions is huge. You can’t fake this as a leader. I used to tell my leadership team that I don’t know how to teach you to demonstrate empathy but you can tell me whether I am modeling it or not. If others can see my effort and attitude (which are the two things within my control in an engagement) in this regard then I am making progress. Thanks for your continued insights and candor.