A good friend of mine recently returned to the 9-to-5 office world after several years of freelancing while her kids were small, and she asked me if I had any advice about being a better boss, since she’s managing a team for the first time in several years.
And with Labor Day fast approaching, and having recently had the pleasure of a delightful lunch with the woman who taught me much of this, now seemed a good time to share what I learned from my first, best boss in my association career.
- Treat people equitably (which is not the same thing as equally).
- Praise in public, correct in private.
- Adapt your style to your team’s personalities to the greatest degree possible.
- Take an appropriate level of interest in them as people – you’re not their best friend, but they’re also not robots.
- Be wildly generous in sharing credit.
- Protect your team. Shit ALWAYS stops with you – it NEVER rolls downhill onto your people.
- Set clear expectations and manage at the minimum your people need to achieve them. Don’t micromanage.
- Don’t ask your people to do something you wouldn’t do.
- Make sure they have authority commensurate with their responsibilities.
- Find out what they’re interested in learning and seek opportunities for them to learn it.
And if you can’t remember all that, just remember this one thing:
Don’t be a jerk.
Happy last weekend of summer, y’all!
Photo by Pablo Varela on Unsplash
Wanda Little-Coffey, CAE says:
Nice read to begin the Labor Day holiday. Great advice, too!