People management as a career carries with it many necessary
skill sets. A bit of counseling, a dash
of conflict management, a hint of patience and a strong dose of listening
skills blend together to ensure that the staff you serve know they are heard
and valued. The management of people is
not a natural ebb and flow for most; it’s a dance mastered through practice,
research and observation. Curious, I don’t
see much of it taught on the university level.
Management courses on business development, organizational development
and finance (and their off-shoots) fill the curriculum for collegiate study.
I recall taking an interpersonal skills course in college,
and there were seven of us on day one.
By day two one had dropped as the size of the class was already too
uncomfortable for him. So, the six of us
plowed through various psychology and communicative styles in order to
appreciate other approaches and develop our own more deeply. It was thoroughly challenging and incredibly vulnerable.
So much of what was emphasized was basic response-oriented
training. When someone walks into a room,
acknowledge that person - say hello, ask them to have a seat, ask if you can help them. Body language,
verbal cues and facial expression are a functional part of managing people. Further, and more likely for many these days, the tonality
and inflection of the voice on the phone, and the sentence construct on a text
or email, set the stage for an appropriate conversation with an employee.
As our work in the human resources field continues to move
in a metric-oriented discipline, which has great merit, it is vital that we not
lose our people management skill set. And
if you’ve never had a people management skill set, then it is time to work on
it.
When people come to you, there has already been a story
playing for them. Pain or anger may have
taken root, depending on the situation. Broken
relationships cut deep – whether breakups, divorces or death. Our job is to get to the heart of it. We’re not counselors, understood, but if an
employee is walking into your office, then bet your bottom dollar that whatever
the issue is will distract that person from work. It is now a work consideration.
Basic coping mechanisms may be extended to the person, and
sometimes that happens naturally just by having someone on whom to unload. The skill sets of the employee could be
clouded, but our act of listening and providing visual cues of such attention
might move those clouds. The ability to
jump back into the swing of “normal” functioning may be as simple as that. Yet, when the door is consistently closed and the email
goes unanswered, an employee dives deeper into his/her issue, making it more
difficult to un-cloud.
Everyone has a story.
There is no one free from baggage.
Everyone wants more time.
Everyone has regrets (or would like a do-over on some things). Everyone has lost their way for a bit. Remember this as a people manager. Those we manage do look to us. What do they see? Of course, depending on the
situation, there are likely to be more steps after listening, but the first step sets
the right tone.
Answer the phone, respond to the email, open your door. Engage with your people. It doesn’t need to be seen as an employee
engagement objective. It should be seen
as being a person. A person who can support
another person. And sometimes we’ll have
quite a heavy burden to share in with this employee. We can manage the road together.