Build these 4 management habits, or risk losing the trust of your team

We all know that how managers support their employees can dramatically influence employee satisfaction and ultimately retention. It also leads to more success for the business if done well. While managers are most often responsible for a functional group, how much time are you putting into being a great manager, not just great at your function?

Here are 4 of my favorite, tried-and-true habits that have scaled and improved my ability to support my team — happy and focused employees are better for business and better for the soul.

#1 Make one-on-one time for the employee, not for you

If you spend 1–1 time getting status on project work from employees, you’re doing it wrong.

Start thinking about what they need from you instead. Three critical things I do to make this sustainable for me:

• Schedule it on a cadence that allows me to always make it happen (less frequent but more consistent is better).
• Make sure employees know this is their time; encourage them to come to the meeting with topics for you, not status. If they are new to this, start asking them about how their relationships and connections are going with colleagues, what mentoring they are getting, what opportunities they are hoping to see in the near-future.
• I always explicitly ask if there is something I can do to support them. HBR has an article on supporting employee mental health: “Go beyond a simple “How are you?” and ask specific questions about what supports would be helpful. Wait for the full answer.” Their study found that “nearly 40% of global employees said that no one at their company had asked them if they were doing OK.” Make sure your team is not in that statistic.

#2 Build an environment that can run itself

If meetings, activities, or communication stops when you are out, you’re doing it wrong.

One of my most precious learnings from working at Amazon is the value of a good mechanism — something that runs itself, even when you are away. There are unlimited methods, but here are a few examples:

• Request weekly status for group discussion — in person or via Slack/Teams/chat so that conversation can continue asynchronously (and you aren’t tempted to add this to your 1:1 time!)
• Request “sound off” times at random on Slack to share what’s on folks’ minds (and watch as this starts to come from others as well)
• Schedule recurring teaching/learning topics with self-registration, run by the presenter
• Create structured peer reviews with self-sign up, and endless more.

#3 Get serious about employee satisfaction data

If you don’t have an action plan and follow-up plan after any employee survey, you’re doing it wrong.

Don’t waste their time asking them questions if you aren’t going to believe the answers or take them seriously enough to do something about it. You can’t solve every problem, but you certainly can solve some. And here’s a critical factor: verbally commit to your team that you will do this. Allow them to hold you accountable. Here’s what I do:

1. While the survey is out, repeatedly inform the team that I will use the data. I’ve seen this straight-forward tactic boost response rates immediately.
2. Deeply evaluate the data when returned and make a plan to close the most critical gaps that you an actually act upon.
3. Share the results and plan with 100% transparency to your team.
4. Actually follow through on said plan.
5. Repeat 1–4 with new data.

If you fail to perform steps 2–4, then step 1 is harmful and erodes trust.

#4 Over-communicate… more.

If you are communicating to your team “just enough,” you’re doing it wrong.

A wise woman once told me a bit of advice on which some of my most appreciated habits have been built:

As soon as you think you’re going overboard with communication, add a little bit more.

What and how I communicate with my team creates a sense of connection and belonging — I can’t count the number of times my employees have told me this. Big announcements via email is not communication. Like any relationship, it should include the big and small, and should be continuous. Here are some some incredibly simply things I’ve made habit:

• I post my status for the week alongside the team, and I don’t limit my comms to official work-related information.
• I send an email every Friday that shares work information plus a story about my past (curated by soliciting questions from the team). This works really well if you are new to the company or organization, and then later you can switch up the stories by asking team members to write about theirs.
• I make sure the “fun chatter” channel is active — I post about my coffee habits, share pictures when I go on vacation, respond to people’s musical shares.
• I create small group, ad-hoc meetings to discuss any big changes in the organization.

You can have boundaries and still keep it real at work.

✨ If you try any of these concepts, let me know if you see greater connection with your employees! ✨