One of the great things about vehicles is they tell you when something is wrong. It’s easy to identify, a light pops up on your dashboard. You simply have the code looked up and you know exactly what is wrong.

With people, it’s not that easy. As a manager you can often see the signs of a problem; poor work performance, a change in attitude, disengagement or other signs.  As a people manager, it’s important to learn about your employees. Once you do, you will find out that they do have their own version of a check engine light. It can manifest itself in behaviors, actions, and/or words that let you know that something is wrong.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to management style consistency. As a manager you can use one style, for every person that reports to you. Or, in my preferred method, you can use many styles, and pick one for an individual.

I had many peers that argued for a single style across all of their direct reports. They felt that this gave them consistency of approach, they could then perfect their personal style and they would have their employees adapt to their style. The interesting thing is that the managers felt it worked best for them as it was easier and any employee that didn’t respond was a “bad fit”.  Those managers often wondered why they scored poorly on employee engagement surveys and exit interviews.

I was never a proponent of that style. My background in psychology and sociology taught me very early on that everyone is different, vastly different.  Every individual has their own sets of likes and dislikes. They have their own sets of motivations and reasons for everything that they do. As a manager, it is key to find out what they are. Many will state, this is too difficult, too time consuming. To those people, I will state, at its core, that’s what a manager SHOULD be doing.

When addressing a performance problem, it is critical to find out what the cause of the problem is. For instance, you can have a substantially tenured employee that has difficulty with one facet of their job. The assumption typically is that the person is just being difficult. As a tenured employee, they have to know what they are doing!  I have learned, that just asking the simple question, “What do you think the problem is?” instead of assuming something is far more effective.   You may find that the person never was properly trained on that part of their job, and as time progressed was too embarrassed to ask how to do it properly. Taking the time to properly show the employee how to complete the task can solve the problem. 

Taking the time to find the real reason for an issue saves more time in the end because you get to the root of the problem faster. This allows you, as a manager, to solve the problem faster.

There are times where work performance can be strongly affected by factors outside the workplace. Often times you will have employees that either gradually or suddenly have performance and attitude issues. Making a blanket assumption that an employee is disengaged because they no longer enjoy their job is something that often managers zero in on. When speaking to an employee, you may find that they have family issues, financial issues, or other serious issues that are affecting work place performance.

If you have an employee assistance plan at your work place, this is the perfect time to offer it. Plan or not, there are often things that you can do for the employee that can make the problem, at minimum, easier to handle. For instance, if the issues are family related, see if you can assist the person with arranging their schedule, or providing time they can take as vacation. There is more to be gained by balancing the needs of the employee with the needs of the business than by taking a hard line in many circumstances. (This also can touch on the legal requirement of reasonable accommodation)

Employees, like customers, remember when someone went out of their way to help them. Taking the time to help others will always pay dividends, not always immediately, but it always has worked out for me.

The most important thing that I can stress is that as a Manager you actually have to care about the development and improvement of your direct reports. You don’t have to be their best friend as you always have to maintain a professional relationship, but if you focus on a win-win solution for both the business and the employee, you will find that you have more productive and highly engaged employees.