Cool bosses build awesome businesses

Appreciating commendable work comes naturally to great managers and they do not shy away from recognising a job done well (Photo: Shutterstock)

It’s an oft-repeated corporate saying, “Good workers leave their managers and not the business setups that employs them”. Research quantifies this by pointing towards a Gallup study of 2015 where nearly half of the 7,000-plus respondents interviewed said they moved out of their job ‘to get away from their manager’.

A similar sentiment is echoed by leading human behaviour thinker Leigh Branham, who is also the founder of consulting firm ‘Keeping the People Inc.’ Branham in his authoritative work ‘The 7 Hidden Reasons Employee Leave’ says that among the main reasons for employees leaving their job is either disagreement or disapproval of their supervisors. Experts believe that for the success of any organisation, the intermediary managers hold the fulcrum. For they hold onto the most valuable human resources of the organisation as the cogwheel.

This brings us to the question: Why do good employees leave? What is with their superiors that they can’t gel well? Some of the understandable reasons are:

• Superiors overwork their employees. For a lack of proper planning and vision mechanism, some managers cannot plan job sheets properly and end up overclocking their resources. This leads to perplexed employees and burnt out motivation.
• Not recognising good work, and putting a blind eye to exemplary achievement is yet another reason why employees forego the determination to put in good work. Everybody likes a pat on the back and managers who fail to appreciate end up losing their best resources.
• Wrong employee policies and bad leaders-by-examples are some reasons that good talents feel suffocated in an organisation. Realising that only slack is appreciated and wrong people are promoted lead these good resources to pack their bags and leave.

A good manager is someone who will never let these man-management disasters happen. These are the cool bosses who empathise first and direct later. Known as the cool bosses, they are the ones whom employees aspire to work with. Take for example a group pitch, where during the client presentation, the lead manager realises that a junior resource has made an error. Rather than freezing up and letting catastrophe happen, and later blaming it on the junior resource, the manager utilises his experience to navigate through the error and win the pitch with his conviction. He later hands over the credit of the business win to the dedication of the junior resource making him a star in front of his colleagues. As a good manager, the senior also later on privately addresses the error and guides the junior resource to avoid such mistakes in the future, essentially setting an example that remains with the junior forever. This is what makes for a cool boss, under which employees grow.

So what do good bosses need to do, to become cool bosses at work, who are looked upon as the rock stars of the organisations? Here are some cheat codes to workplace success:

• Honesty and transparency are not a compromise and go a long way in forging lifelong relationships. Being a boss who understands, underlines and encourages employees towards a goal, being absolutely honest about the expectations is someone who is much regarded among the workforce.
• Making people accountable yet staying on top of the delegated work to support and guide them as required. Trusting employees to handle the work, once training has been given to them will encourage them to deliver excellent results and respect their seniors more for reposing trust in them.
• Generating room for ideas and opinion, a good boss incubates teamwork and encourages creative thinking. Good bosses believe in internalising the community culture and allows for the growth of an individual. Open communication is a great boss’s hallmark and empowering people to achieve their strength is what great leaders are good at.
• Appreciating commendable work comes naturally to great managers and they do not shy away from recognising a job done well. They encourage employees to develop amazing self-confidence and become go-getters themselves.
• Great bosses are also known to create interpersonal relationships. They do not forget colleagues long after they have left the organisation. Good bosses are known to nurture great alumni relationships and are respected for the industry connect they have.

A remarkable example of great leadership would be when me and my colleagues visited our Headquarters, where our boss went out of his way to make all of us feel comfortable and warm us up to our international counterparts. The boss made it a point to pick us up from the airport and drop to the Hotel. The boss also ensured of well-arranged travel schedules and informal get-togethers with colleagues and his family to make us feel as a part of the culture. He even went out of his way to arrange passes for the Symphony and accompanied us to a shopping experience at a nearby town. You would ask what did the boss earn out of this extravagant gesture? The answer lies in employee gratitude, where we felt touched by these gestures and have since then put in extra efforts to bring greater progress to the organization. As a famous saying goes, “Successful companies don’t earn profits, they earn relationships.”

A great boss is someone who knows his employees inside out. Growing with them and knowing them as individuals is a symbol of a great employer. In a nutshell, ‘employees don’t care as to how much you know until they know as to how much you care!’

A quote by Sam Walton perfectly paraphrases the hallmark of a great leader, “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.”

-By Zubin Zack, Director and Chief Recognition Strategist, O.C. Tanner India

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.