Serve Those You Lead

03/07/07

Here’s a radical thought for today’s option rich managers and would be dot.com millionaires: The company doesn’t exist to improve your life. Your job exists to improve the company’s long term ability to serve customers.

One of the most important ways to do that is to develop people.

Paradoxically, when you devote yourself to improving the company and the capabilities of the people who work there, you’ll improve your own life financially and in many other ways.

Here’s how to serve those you lead:

Help develop employees. Offer training, send them to seminars, pay for classes. More over, offer frequent on the job challenges. They teach just as well and the lessons burn deeper.

Help people achieve their goals. You have to know employees well enough to know what their goals are. Don’t assume; uncover them through casual conversation and more formal events like appraisals.

Let people figure out how. Goals answer three questions: Who, what, and when. You or your boss has already figured out “why.” You’ll help motivate employees by letting them take care of the “how.”

Include people in your decisions. If you want wholehearted support for your decisions, get input from the people who will be affected. People want to be heard, and listening to their ideas shows respect for their intelligence and concern for their daily work life.

Give people a role to live up to. Rather than create a role of their own, many people wait for an authority figure like a boss to hand them one. Make it a good one. For example: “You’ve really got a gift for numbers, Sally. I bet you could learn to use a spreadsheet program in no time.”

Hold people accountable. You honor people when you expect them to meet their obligations. You’re saying, “You are adults. You can handle these responsibilities.” If they fail at a job or task, send them back to do it again, coaching as needed.

Serving those you lead soon teaches an important lesson: When you give, you get.