Managers Need to Be Better

Build more trust, clarity, candor, and respect in your team in 2021

Have you ever had almost zero direction given to you on a project, and then have your manager get frustrated with you when your work missed the mark? Chances are, you have a bad leader.

Have you ever had a direct report completely blindside you with a resignation? Chances are you are that bad leader.

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that widespread and true leadership is lacking in many of our institutions, workplaces, community organizations, and even our families. We expect our leaders to be naturally talented, charismatic, and unerring — born fully formed and thrown into the fire only to come out unscathed. Is it any wonder these superheroes have not just appeared in all levels of our lives to save us? In reality, leaders have to be grown. They need guidance, feedback, education, and, most importantly, practice.

In the corporate world, many talented individual contributors are thrown into management because they are good at what they do. Unfortunately, they become these people managers often without that guided practice, or even any thought at all about how to build their teams. The results here can be disastrous for the business, and for the people trapped in these dysfunctional teams.

To avoid this, new managers, and managers working to grow into true leaders, should embrace four key principles in building their teams; trust, clarity, candor, and respect.

Trust

A trusting relationship is not born overnight, but you can start by hiring those who can be capable of earning and giving trust. In a work environment, this foundation is often built on an individual’s character and in their capabilities. Look for people who assume positive intent and integrity. Pair this with their actual skills — make sure they have the capability to learn or are already knowledgeable in your chosen field. Ask them to quantify their results, and confirm they can deliver.

You have to be and do the same to create trust, because this is something that is shared. It isn’t something you just bestow! Assume positive intent in your own team and with stakeholders, always act transparently, and in the guidelines of your organization’s values. Delivering results for your team will often mean advocating successfully for new resources, more visibility, promoting their work, and demonstrating impact on the business.

You can also model this behavior in everyday, more tactical ways. Some behaviors will build trust — quick reviews of work vs micromanaging, dividing and conquering projects as partners sometimes, using direct language, or even letting team members work from home are all examples. On the other hand, insisting on detailed and laborious documentation of all work or time spent, being a gatekeeper for all work before being shared with partners, or talking about specific team members’ performance with peers are all trust minimizers.

This trust will give your team member the room to deliver their work in the way that best suits their working style, and help maximize productivity. It can also minimize unnecessary stress, which often hinders engagement. Keeping high performers and high potential team members engaged is critical if you want to avoid losing them.

Clarity

One of the best things a manager can do for their teams is to be extremely clear about what exactly they are responsible to deliver. Project scope, outcome, and timelines should all be clearly defined at the outset so your team knows exactly what the expectations are for their deliverables. Have weekly 1:1’s or even more frequent touch bases as needed to keep your team on track. Document the scope in a charter — this can be a deck, a Wiki page, or even just an email or Slack. Know that course corrections are often needed in fast paced projects, and a good manager will provide that guidance on an iterative basis, rather than wait for some grand reveal on a deadline date. Be available and ready to reiterate the goals of the work. If you don’t take the time to describe the ideal end result, how can your team ever really be productive? Relying on your team as masters of mind reading and intuition will not help you deliver results for your business.

Also be sure to engage in longer term goal and performance management with your team. Everyone should know what their overall responsibilities are, how they fit into the broader organization, and how their deliverables will impact the business objectives for the year. Ask what your team members actually want from their careers longer term, and be honest about how their current role may or may not help them achieve that vision. Commit to helping to find resources to further that development, or be honest if the role is likely not a fit.

Candor

This honesty, or candor, is another really key component to building a highly engaged and productive team. In fact, this is probably key to building any meaningful relationship with another human being. This does not mean a manager needs to share their own personal family or health troubles, pass on confidential information, or bad mouth co-workers. Instead, this can take the form of honest and constructive feedback, insight into organizational challenges or constraints, and sometimes showing that you are also a whole person, more than just a professional façade.

Candid feedback can be given in 1:1’s, performance conversations, or even on project specific threads. This should dovetail really well with providing clarity, in that you help to guide your team’s work approach and deliverables to keep them as on target as possible. You can’t help them succeed and remain engaged and productive without this. Don’t forget to actually give recognition and positive feedback when it is warranted. It is easy to let this slip in a really busy environment! Similarly, don’t shrink from the hard conversations when the feedback is bad. Write your bullet points down first if you are uncomfortable. Use clear language, and be really specific about what needed improvement and why. Reflect on whether any of the failure was due on your part, and acknowledge that out loud. Try to come up with a plan for how you or your team member can actually fix the issues here.

Sometimes, you are also going to have to let the curtain slip just a little bit. Sometimes a change in direction in business really is just because of bad or unclear leadership. Sometimes you don’t know if you will retain that important client, if layoffs will affect your department, or what that competitor’s new offer will mean for your business. Be a human and acknowledge these kinds of challenges for your team. They know that you know! It’s ok to be honest to a certain degree, but then try to refocus them on what they can control. A team can always focus on their customer, do the best with what they have, or work with their best sense of what is right for the business.

Last but not least, you are a complex person who brings much more than just education and work experience to the job, as is each person on your team. Sometimes you need to take a time out to show and name this. Racial injustice, a global pandemic, and fraught elections affected us all in 2020, and will again in 2021. Every day, people get sick and loved ones are lost, babies are born, and jobs are lost and gained. With enough trust and respect on your team, each person should feel the space is there if they want to share or discuss a bit more about who they are and what matters to them.

Respect

Last but not least, you must show respect for your team, and demand they show it to one another. Like trust, this is a two-way street, and you will have to earn respect from your team as well.

At the most basic level, you should never speak to your team in a belittling, antagonistic, or threatening way. Unfortunately, this happens often, especially in high pressure environments with inexperienced bosses. This can also take the form of discrimination and harassment against groups and individuals. Just, no. If you find yourself doing this, you should be out of a job. Expect some HR or legal consequences in your future. If you have a member of your team demonstrating these behaviors, it is your job to report this to HR and work to fix the situation for the rest of your team.

You should also show respect for your team’s expertise. You hired them because they knew their stuff, right? If you did that right, then you shouldn’t tell them how their work should get done. If they do need more guidance, then share your own expertise as a coach. Help them to learn the new skills that are needed for the job.

This serves another purpose — your team has to respect that you know what you are doing. You might not be the master of your domain, but aim to demonstrate working knowledge of each of your team members’ scopes. Set goals for your team and stick to them, try to avoid rescheduling 1:1’s at the last minute, advocate for your team’s resources, and celebrate their wins. Build relationships with other departments, and ask hard questions of leadership on behalf of your team when needed.

Last but not least, try to respect the boundaries of your individual team members. Is someone in a different time zone? Try to avoid very late or very early meetings. Any working parents on the team? If they can’t be free at 3:30–3:45 to get a kid off the bus, or they have to leave the office by 6 to get to day care pick up, try to avoid asks at these times. If you trust them, the work will get done.

While these guidelines seem like they may just help you to build pleasant relationships with your team, practicing these will actually help you deliver more by minimizing interferences, promote diversity by creating an inclusive space that lets people work in ways that are best for them, and actually grow a team by retaining and engaging highly productive people. There are always exceptions, and it is difficult to always be a “perfect” manager. This is why the practice of these concepts is so important. Over time, these should be ingrained into your team culture, and become part of your muscle memory. Visit these concepts often until this is true. Use candid 1:1’s and team meetings to get qualitative feedback on your progress, and consider anonymous surveys to measure improvements with a big enough team. Your organization may even have culture surveys to help drive this. Ultimately, your own goals and KPIs will only be met if you have a well functioning team.