On New Year’s Eve, I posted a blog on the 7 Things I Want My Inside Sales Team To Know for 2014. Now that we’re already days in to the last week of February (bring on spring please!), I want to double check that list to ensure I was actually following through on the characteristics I felt separated good managers from not-so-good ones. Of course it’s a continual work in progress, but I feel like I’ve mostly stuck to the expectations I’ve set for myself.
I would say a particularly difficult part of any job is #5 on my list: I will always make myself available. One thing that nearly all the managers I’ve worked with over years would say is that they wish they could have carved out more time in their day. Time management seems to be the biggest challenge for all of us, no matter the job title. As much as the average employee would like to have their boss at their beck and call, that generally is never going to be the case.
I’ve mentioned this in the past, but when I meet with every new hire I make sure to let them know that they can think of me as just accessible to them as their immediate boss, manager, peer and so on. They need to feel that they can approach me throughout the day for an opinion or assistance especially since, as I mentioned above, their direct boss is never going to be omnipresent. In fact, in an ideal work setting, everyone should be approachable no matter the job level.
Just a few of the benefits from what I’ve seen in this kind of environment are:
Questions can be addressed quickly:
Rather than always waiting on your direct boss for an answer, you can leverage others to help you.
More open communication across the organization:
The more sharing of thoughts, the better. The average executive may not always have direct access to the people in the trenches every day, and this approach will ensure this happens. Also, having more causal interactions, as opposed to interacting in a formal meeting, allows us to see a side of an employee or boss we don’t normally see. Lasty, it allows the high-up muckety mucks to get closer to potential problems they weren’t originally aware of.
It simply improves morale:
If a higher level executive makes him or herself available to help, it truly gives the employees the sense that we are all in this together.
So, how accessible are you? I understand that when we’re asked to answer a question during a typical busy day, our gut reaction may be “I don’t have time for this!” In my opinion, we need to always carve that time out. The impact may not always be immediate, but it will certainly have long lasting positive effects on your company culture.
