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News
• 10 Things
That Good Bosses Do.
By Steve Tobak / The Corner Office
As we discovered in 7 Signs You May Be a Bad Manager, bosses aren’t
usually aware that they are bad bosses. The fact is that nobody
wants to believe they’re the problem. Nevertheless, there’s a bell
curve for all things involving people, which means there are few
really bad bosses, few really good bosses, and most of you fall
somewhere in the middle.
To me that says, for the vast majority of you, there’s lots of room
for improvement.
So, if you’re not exhibiting any of the 7 Signs, that’s great, pat
yourself on the back. Still, if you really want to up your
management game, maybe even vault into the executive or ownership
ranks someday, you’d better start doing at least a few of these 10
Things That Good Bosses Do.
Incidentally, this isn’t from some academic study. These are real
attributes of real bosses, culled from decades of observation, which
motivate and inspire employees to perform at their best.
1. Pay people what they’re worth, not what you can get away with.
What you lose in expense you gain back several-fold in performance.
2. Take the time to share your experiences and insights.
Labels like mentor and coach are overused. Let’s be specific here.
Employees learn from those generous enough to share their
experiences and insights. They don’t need a best friend or a
shoulder to cry on.
3. Tell it to employees straight, even when it’s bad news. To
me, the single most important thing any boss can do is to man up and
tell it to people straight. No BS, no sugarcoating, especially when
it’s bad news or corrective feedback.
4. Manage up … effectively. Good bosses keep management off
employee’s backs. Most people don’t get this, but the most important
aspect of that is giving management what they need to do their jobs.
That’s what keeps management away.
5. Take the heat and share the praise. It takes courage to
take the heat and humility to share the praise. That comes naturally
to great bosses; the rest of us have to pick it up as we go.
6. Delegate responsibility, not tasks. Every boss delegates,
but the crappy ones think that means dumping tasks they hate on
workers, i.e. s**t rolls downhill. Good bosses delegate
responsibility and hold people accountable. That’s fulfilling and
fosters professional growth.
7. Encourage employees to hone their natural abilities and
challenge them to overcome their issues. That’s called getting
people to perform at their best.
8. Build team spirit. As we learned before, great groups outperform
great individuals. And great leaders build great teams.
9. Treat employees the way they deserve to be treated. You
always hear people say they deserve respect and to be treated as
equals. Well, some may not want to hear this, but a) respect must be
earned, and b) most workers are not their boss’s equals.
10. Inspire your people. All the above motivate people, but
few bosses have the ability to truly inspire their employees. How?
By sharing their passion for the business. By knowing just what to
say and do at just the right time to take the edge off or turn a
tough situation around. Genuine anecdotes help a lot. So does a good
sense of humor.
All this adds up to an environment where people feel appreciated,
recognized, challenged, and appropriately compensated. So what do
you think? How do you measure up on the good boss scale?
Steve Tobak is a consultant, writer, and former senior executive
with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry.
He's the managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a Silicon
Valley-based firm that provides strategic consulting, executive
coaching, and speaking services to CEOs and management teams of
small-to-mid-sized companies.
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