There I said it.
And since I like to save important items, both personal and business, it would stand to reason that I have a stack of Wall Street Journals.
If you were to walk into stick your head in my office closet, you would find issues of the newspaper from the period of March 2008 to December 2008 – right in the heart of the meltdown.
During that period of time you only need to have watched the headlines to understand where the economy and public sentiment were headed.
Each day brought more depressing descriptors.
And now that trend had solidly reversed itself.
In the Monday, April 5, 2010 edition of The Wall Street Journal this headline caught my eye, “As Crisis Eases, CEO’s Give Staff Some TLC”.
In the article, the CEO of PricewatershouseCoopers proudly explained, “As the economy turns around, there is more risk of losing people so we’ve increased our efforts” to talk with workers.
Really?
At the risk of reading too much into one quote from the story, this statement struck me as odd.
Is the real reason (or right time) to aggressively get in front of your employees, regardless of where in the management hierarchy you fit, only when confronted by the threat of defections?
Clearly, no.
Why, then, do so many of my clients lament the lack of engagement that their bosses have in their work?
Unfortunately, managers that are credited with being “hands-off” wear that attribute like a badge of honor. It is not always a compliment and often does employees a disservice.
Conversely, I had a great discussion this week with a coaching client who was just returning from a national sales meeting. Since he is the National Sales Manager of the firm, I asked him to debrief me on what he learned, what action steps were in place, and how he was going to follow up to keep folks accountable. When he delineated his process for how he was going to make the three most important outcomes of the meeting come to fruition, he demonstrated to me that “extra something” that exceptional managers have.
His plan included being high touch, just as he had been all of last year, and the year prior. In the process he was solidifying his team and giving them a sense of purpose and ownership in the success of the firm; as a result he has successful and satisfied employees.
Isn’t it true that great, memorable managers know that staying visible, walking the halls (real or metaphoric), and eating in the cafeteria are activities for every environment and not just reserved for instances when the headlines turn bright again?
Are you a manager? What’s your MQ?