INNERGISE!

Each month Innergy research an area of business that is pertinent to our customer database, carrying out a brief survey and providing some practical ideas that can be immediately implemented to help individuals, teams and organisations overcome some of the key challenges they face.

This month we asked what the most important aspect of your relationship with your boss was. 45% said respect was the most important to them, 35% said trust and 20% said getting on with the manager (which was higher than anticipated). The combination of all three is powerful, so let’s look at some thoughts and ideas.

Respect

1. Be clear for what you stand for. Whether it is vision, ideas or values, help people to understand what is meaningful and important to you, communicate it, live it and stick to it.
2. Demonstrate respect to earn it- show a willingness to accept the differences of others and treat them on you

Trust

In a survey of over 700 leaders by leadership guru Jo Owen (if you haven’t read it I highly recommend the excellent How to Lead), trust emerged as one of five key traits of these highly effective leaders. For people to be highly motivated and perform at their best for someone, they really had to trust their manager.

What creates trust? You will be trusted as leader if your people answer say and think the following about you…

• You are as being as honest as you can be with me
• You give me regular, constructive and timely feedback, on the good and the bad, so I know where I stand with you
• You do what you say you are going to do

The value of trust is the impact on influence. The more I trust you and what you say, the more I am open to being influenced by you. When those closest to me in my private life, who I know have my best interests at heart and whom I trust implicitly tell me my new peach coloured trousers actually look really stupid on me, I’ll listen because I trust them.
As a Director of a business I remember handing in my notice as I had been offered what I considered to be a great opportunity. My CEO persuaded me not to go for it as she didn’t feel it would be a good move for me in the long term, I trusted her, listened, reviewed my decision and stayed. Nine months later I did move on, and in that case my boss accepted and confirmed that it would be a good move for me.

Those managers and leaders who are trusted tend to find the time to get close to their people, listening and asking questions and understanding.

20% said get on with them

Three tips for getting on with people within your team:

1. Understand their motivation – if you aren’t able to list the top three motivators of your team, how can you really claim to understand them
2. Understand their personality – what personality type are they (introverted vs outgoing, thinkers vs feelers etc.) and adapt your behaviour and communication accordingly
3. Win together – irrespective of whether you share interests or not, laugh at the same things, when individuals within teams achieve and celebrate success together it automatically creates a sense of belonging and enhances relationships.

So create those challenging goals, support, guide, coach or direct as appropriate, and celebrate winning together.