When I used to work in front line customer service professional roles it used to make me very angry and frustrated when my manager ignored my efforts. I was once unfortunate enough to have a manager who did not believe in praising her staff as they were ‘only doing their job’. Looking back on my front line career, I know that when I was managed by someone who cared about me, I always performed better, took less time off sick and had less complaints (well, I only ever had two complaints in my entire career, but I’m not here to blow my own trumpet!).
So, as a manager, or supervisor, team leader, what ever your job title is, make sure you catch your team members doing something right often, and recognise them for it, in public if they are happy with that. If you have to have a difficult conversation with someone that should always be done in private, but we will be looking at that in a future post. Remember, cared about people will look after your customers far better!
13/04/2012: Since I wrote this original post I have become involved with The WOW! Awards www.thewowawards.co.uk which help companies to catch their people doing something right by encouraging their customers to nominate individual team members for awards.
Graham, I enjoy reading your comments as they resonate with me in my job. The ‘penny dropped’ for me yesterday when some of my work colleagues were feeling frustrated. In some large enterprises, I think management become too focused on ‘systems’ and forget about the staff working with them. Managers can be employed for a particular skill to operate systems, but they often have no people skills and never will. A manager must be multi talented and not just offer one strength only. Someone with IT skills might be an asset in keeping information systems up and running, but it’s just one ingredient in the overall operation. When there are ‘human resource’ issues they can tend to bury their heads and hope it goes away because they aren’t equiped with skills to deal with people.
I absolutely agree Karen. Some people unfortunately find themselves promoted into positions of responsibility because they are good at performing certain tasks, but they don’t have the skills needed to take people with them. In my time as a team leader and manager I always found time to get my hands dirty, sometimes at the expense of keeping my managers happy. I always thought it was more important to keep my customers happy than keep my managers happy! In the ideal organisation, in my opinion, keeping customer happy should keep managers happy! 🙂