– just what you want hotel employees to do. Furthermore, he had taken the initiative to learn the names of the meeting rooms so that he could help people with directions.
After the temp job was over, Horst gave Walt a job and became his mentor. Over the years, Walt became an excellent hospitality professional, and they became friends as well. Wherever Horst went, Walt followed, steadily advancing in his career.
One day, the hotel security department caught Walt doing an illegal activity while on the job. Termination was the only option. Horst was devastated. He literally cried, but he did his job.
The employees in the hotel knew the facts. And they saw that Horst did not try to make an exception or cover up the incident to save his friend's job. People respected that.
Lesson
People do not lose respect for you because you become friends with some employees. They lose respect when you decide not to do your job as a manager.
Look at the next objection to forming close relationships:
“People will accuse me of having favorites.”
Here is reality: You have favorites now.
It is human nature. You have better chemistry with some employees than with others. And, by the way, your employees know very well who your favorites are. You might not treat these people differently in terms of rewards, shift preferences, rule enforcement, et cetera. But people know that you have favorites. So…
Lesson
Don't worry about having favorites because it is unavoidable. Just make sure that you give people rewards based on performance, not based on the relationship.
“But,” you may ask, “what are the benefits of forming close relationships with my employees? It is fraught with risk. Why should I take these risks?”
Imagine you have a very serious problem in your life, a problem in which you need someone to show up on your doorstep tomorrow morning. The deadline is nonnegotiable. They must show up tomorrow morning. Who would you call? Who would absolutely do this for you? Have a real person in mind before you read further.
You are probably thinking of someone with whom you have a close relationship. Your certainty that this person will show up to help is based entirely on your relationship.
Managers who are close to their people can ask for more effort and better results. They can ask people to hang in during difficult times. They can ask people to try a new process. They can ask for forgiveness when they have exercised poor judgment. And even when they do not ask, managers who are close to their people inspire more discretionary effort. Discretionary effort is people's willingness to go above and beyond, to do more than the minimum requirement.
Lesson
When you have close, positive relationships with your people, they will do things for you, not because there is some reward for them, but simply because they care about you…And because they know you care about them.
But doesn't this go both ways so that they can now ask you, their manager, for more effort and better results?
Yes, it does. If you are not willing to extend yourself for your people, why would they extend themselves for you?
Lesson
Your proactive efforts to strengthen the relationships with the people you manage will increase motivation, engagement, and loyalty.
Some readers will definitely be uncomfortable with this approach and will outright reject it for the reasons discussed in this chapter. That's okay. Every manager has his or her own style. Relationships – personal as well as professional – always involve risk.
But we know there are some managers out there who have questioned the common advice to keep a distance, to draw a line. We are speaking to you. In your heart of hearts, you have said to yourself, “Things feel better when I get close to my people.” To you, we say: Go for it. Give it a try. See what results you get in your laboratory. The risks are well worth the rewards.
Experiment: Strengthen Relationships
1. Find opportunities to get together with your employees outside of work. Do this at least every couple of weeks, or more often.
2. If you are inclined to pursue friendships with certain employees, do it.
3. Find out what is going on in people's personal lives. Demonstrate that they are of interest to you.
4. After 90 days, think about how this has made a difference. Are people more supportive of each other? Do you sense an improved esprit de corps? Has morale improved?
CHAPTER 4
ACCEPT PEOPLE AS THEY ARE
Accepting people as they are – not asking them to change – is the most important aspect of cultivating positive relationships. In fact, this is the most important chapter in the book. This chapter can change your life.
Bill's Lesson Learned
A friend, Bill Kerrey, tells this story. His daughter did not keep her room neat and tidy and Bill was determined to help her change that.
Every weekday he would drive her home from school. The drive was tense because they both knew that when they got home, he would look at her room right away. Every day it was messy, and every day the evening went downhill from there. He tried every technique in the book (and some that were not in the book) to motivate her to change. Nothing worked.
One day he realized that his focus on keeping her room neat was damaging their relationship, and he realized that his relationship with his daughter was way more important to him than a clean room.
That day on the drive home he asked her about her day. When they got home he did not inspect her room. He just closed the door. He figured out that if he did not see it, it would not bother him. So he just quit focusing on her room, and he quit asking her to change. He accepted her as she was.
Bill reports that his relationship with his daughter improved overnight.
Dr. William E. Hall defined a “life theme” as a pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that is persistent over time. Every time you describe someone, you are naming themes: cheerful, thoughtful, lazy, organized, courageous – get the picture? These descriptions help us predict the behaviors we are likely to observe in others.
If you want to understand just how persistent themes are, think about your most recent school reunion (or some similar event). Did not you see the same themes you saw when you knew those people years ago? The class clown is still the class clown. The gossips still gossip. The introverts are still quiet. Themes persist over time and are particularly resistant to change.
Despite the fact that people tend not to change, we are quite cavalier about asking people to change anyway. We do this all the time in performance evaluations and in 360 feedback. Do any of these examples sound familiar?
1. Do not be so sensitive.
2. You need to be more organized.
3. You need to be more detail oriented.
4. You
