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6 Tips for Managing Subordinates

Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 9:36 am

Not everyone has the leadership abilities of Jack Welch or Steve Jobs, but there are some things everyone in a leadership position can do to improve their relationship with their team. Mutual respect is vital to a leader’s ultimate success so it is important that these six tips are followed by all leaders.

Coach Behind Closed Doors; Praise in Public
Good leaders realize a lot of their success is achieved through the help of others. Instinctively, they seem to understand that their accomplishments are due to their support group so they are careful not to publicly humiliate their valued contributors. Praising in public goes a long way toward instilling confidence in subordinates while coaching behind closed doors maintains the two-way respect built in the relationship. Mistakes are bound to be made but if a leader handles them professionally and appropriately, subordinates will continue to grow and prosper under the leader’s leadership. Remember the phrase “it may be a bad dog, but it’s my dog.”

Remember You Don’t Know it All
Leaders by nature have an undying belief they know more than others or those within their peer group. While this reality may be true in many instances, it’s not true across the board. Each person, regardless of their position within an organization, has something unique to add and has expertise in areas others do not, or they wouldn’t be a member of the team. You’ll win more people over by encouraging others to contribute to your team’s success than you will assuming you know it all and making every decision autonomously. Seek others’ input and consider multiple points of view prior to making a decision.

Prioritize Priorities
Every project or task cannot be a top priority project or task. There can only be one number one. You owe it to your supporting cast to define which projects take precedence over others so they can effectively do their jobs. If you consistently flip-flop priorities each week, you are sending mixed signals that will result in skittish outcomes. To achieve success, a team needs a vision and a plan. Part of that includes setting priorities and sticking to them. Your subordinates will thank you in the long run even if you become a stickler every now and again.

Get a Life
Just because you enjoy your job so much that you regularly put in fourteen hour days plus weekends, it’s not acceptable for that to become an expectation for others. Most employees enjoy having a life outside of work, and it’s ridiculous for a leader or a company to expect those working under their guidance to suggest otherwise. Just because an employee is on salary doesn’t mean free reign over their life. When the expectation is set that employees work 8-5 Monday through Friday, and employees meet those stipulations, all bets are off for your “mandatory” 10 AM meetings on Saturday morning. In other words, get a life and allow your employees to live theirs as they wish once the workday and week is completed.

Walk in Others’ Shoes
Let’s say you have a very good employee that has been falling off performance wise the past few weeks and doesn’t seem to be herself of late. Most leaders’ gut reaction is to have a “coaching” session with the employee. Why not have a heartfelt conversation with the employee to find out what is going on instead? If the employee will open up and share what they are experiencing, give her the benefit of the doubt by attempting to put yourself in her place before taking corrective action. She will appreciate the empathy, and you might just gain a new perspective on things that will benefit both of you throughout the professional relationship. Everything isn’t always black and white in spite of our wishes.

Be Fair Above All Else
No one appreciates discrimination. At the same time, employees resent a leader that has favorites which receive preferential treatment. In short, don’t go there! As a leader, it is your job to be objective and treat everyone with equality above all. Naturally, you’re going to like certain people more than others because that is human nature, but don’t let that blur your judgment of their work performance. If one of your more likeable employees makes a mistake, discipline them just as you would the gruff of the team and vice versa. It’s only fair, and it will maintain respect amongst the group.

In conclusion, by following these six tips, you can improve your leadership skills while also gaining additional respect and admiration from your team. Isn’t that what every leader wants?

One of the Bad Five Finally Falls

Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 6:42 am

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On October 22, 2006, I posted an entry outlining five CEOs that must go. On 1/3/2007, #1 on that dubious list took a dive–Bob Nardelli from Home Depot. Reports say he “resigned,” but that’s being kind–it was a forced resignation, and Bob had been under tremendous heat thanks in part to his antics on investor conference calls and his insistence to devalue customer service at the store level. The guy was downright horrible when all was said and done.

He came in as an outsider from GE who self-admittedly didn’t understand retail. It puzzles me as to why he was given a shot to begin with, but he didn’t help himself by being so arrogant and defiant. Early on in his tenure, Bob reduced inventories and staff counts to levels that alienated customers and employees. Several talented employees walked, and Lowe’s chipped away at the customer base quite effectively as a result.

Have you shopped at a Home Depot lately then visited a Lowe’s on the same day? The experience is night and day–the people at Home Depot act as if they can’t wait to get you out of there while the Lowe’s people seem genuinely eager to help you complete your home improvement projects correctly. Home Depot’s slogan is “you can do it, we can help,” but the knee jerk reaction one might have when hearing that is “you can help, but you won’t.” For my money, I’d pay more at Lowe’s just to avoid dealing with certain malcontents at Home Depot. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very helpful people still working at Home Depot, but you have to work pretty hard to find them now whereas they used to be sprinkled generously throughout.

So much for GE making a mistake (in Nardelli’s eyes) by not turning over the keys to the top post when Jack Welch retired. They said “thanks, but no thanks.” Home Depot should have said the same thing, but they are now on the hook for a $210 million package to make Nardelli go away that includes $20 million in severance. Don’t feel bad for him as he obviously isn’t going to be hurting. How many positions throw exorbitant amounts of money at you to make you go away when you do a bad job? The only positions I know of are within sports and CEOs.

Here’s my overall take-away and hopefully thought provoking tidbit out of all this: The “resignation” of Bob Nardelli further underscores the leadership void we have in this country at some of our larger corporations. According to an August 2006 Corporate Library Survey, 52.7% of CEOs today are on the job for less than five years. On one hand, five years isn’t long enough to change a company’s ultimate course, but five years is way too long if you have the wrong person at the helm. There are a lot of wrong people guiding companies today that will play out in less than the next five years so that alarming 52.7% can be viewed as an “error rate” of sorts. Let’s focus on reducing that error rate shall we.