Virtue Matters Most: Respect Breeds Respect
If you've had the good fortune of working alongside a manager with indisputable integrity, you noticed it, appreciated it, and in all likelihood respected that individual. Respect breeds respect. And those whom you respect, you trust. When you place your trust in a manager, you generally want to please that individual. Respect and trust are the two best motivating factors in town.
Conversely, if you've worked in an office or on a team run by a less than stellar soul, you've no doubt experienced the complete opposite feeling. When laboring for a manager whom you hold in utter contempt, there's no warm, fuzzy feeling in the air. Managers who are not respected by their employees invariably preside over offices rife with dissension and assembly-line personnel turnover.
You Don't Have to Be Mother Teresa
This little discourse on virtue does not mean you, as a coach and manager of people, need be an ethical Mother Teresa to pass muster. Naturally, many managers have topsy-turvy personal lives for one reason or another. Indeed, we are all human beings walking around with our various faults and skeletons rattling around in our closets.
And, if you haven't noticed, very few folks are sporting halos. But the fact remains, morally bankrupt persons away from the job are not about to find their morals in desk drawers at the office. Shallow and insincere individuals, without the capacity to grasp the interior needs of their fellow human beings, always come up short and lack the necessary interpersonal skills required of good coaches and mentors.
No Actors Need Apply
Granted, there are a lot of great actors on the business stage. There are men and women who can fool us all for a time by achieving positive results in their managerial roles. But in the long run, their acts invariably wear thin, and the real personalities must, sooner or later, show their faces. And when those faces resemble the gruesome Freddie Krueger, their managerial gigs are up.
The aforementioned character traits of dysfunctional managers make the case that respect and trust in workplace environments are absolutely crucial if employee satisfaction and company profits are to be maximized. And this cannot be stressed enough. The ethical standards that you establish as a coach — by both your words and deeds — set the overall tone for your employees. In the common parlance, it's known as leadership by example.
The Managers from Hell
At some point, some of you may have worked for the dreaded “Manager from Hell.” (And if you haven't yet, your day may well come.) Here's an illuminating case study of one such manager named Andy:
Andy was a marketing whiz with an undeniable creative streak. He was charming and quite ambitious — a man destined to “go places,” people said. And he did indeed go places. Andy was a very successful salesperson, a high-paid consultant, and finally a manager of a sales division with a large staff in a very big company. He fancied himself the right man for the job, properly schooled and highly experienced, who knew by heart all those managerial textbook bullets on how to get the most out of people. Andy could recite backwards and forwards all the conventional techniques to motivate people. And merely increasing his team's productivity wasn't Andy's only goal. Are you kidding? He desired increasing sales by leaps and bounds and smashing all kinds of company records. Andy viewed his managerial moment as a chance to get the biggest feather yet in his career cap.
Aside from his inflated opinion about himself and runaway hubris, the trouble with Andy was that his personal life was in total shambles. Andy conducted himself as the quintessential swinging bachelor, but was married with an infant son. His frenzied lifestyle dazzled his subordinates at first, most of whom were young and more or less in sync with him in letting the good times roll in the after hours. Gradually, though, Andy's personal indulgence severed the cord of trust between him and his staff. Ultimately, his employees perceived him as a man who looked out for number one only. On the occasions that his wife and child would come to the office, Andy would play the part of doting husband and father, while his staff looked on aghast, knowing full well their leader was insincere and downright disreputable.
Your immediate reaction may be to condemn Andy for his personal life. However, the particulars of Andy's personal life are not a business concern. What is a business concern in this scenario is Andy's utter lack of discretion. His personal behavior led directly to a breakdown of respect and trust at the office, the two cornerstones of a manager-employee relationship, and predictably shattered his ability to effectively lead and get the positive outcomes that he so desperately wanted from his people. And when he didn't get all that he wanted, Andy lashed out at his team, blaming them entirely for their less-than-brilliant performances.
Maybe you've had the displeasure of working for an Andy type. If you have, it's a safe bet that the office atmosphere was absent of the respect and trust that is critical in any productive and healthy working environment. Without respect and trust emanating from the manager's office, you can, rest assured, predict there will be day-to-day bedlam with fast and furious turnover in the staff, until the day comes when the Andys themselves are turned over.
