“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”
― Theodore Roosevelt

As leadership has been the main topic for me in 2024 thus far and as psychology poses a great deal of importance in human resources in general, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to empower your team on the daily basis, especially in today’s times where more and more people are becoming less and less resilient. Not to say anything negative about it but just to call a spade a spade. People are operating primarily on emotion and whatever kind of person your colleague is (extrovert or introvert), they will seek out feedback and positive communication towards them because it’s basic human nature. Communication and enforcing continuous feedback is rather easier said than done as there are more managers who have a challenge with it than those who don’t. Whether this stems from the company culture or individual professional development through one’s career is open for debate but the idea of this article are the little things a manager can do to empower their own employees without too much effort and still get for it a lot more in return. What steps can be taken to achieve that and what has to be taken into consideration for it have proper effect? Let’s dive into it.

It’s the little things

When we talk about feedback in general, one thing I noticed which is almost universal to all conversations about this topic, is the fact that it doesn’t happen as frequently as many employees would like it to. Managers usually take a lot of time to properly address their employees but just because there is an official process on a quarterly, yearly or any other period basis, it doesn’t mean small positive or encouraging reinforcements are out of the question. Just a small positive comment on a done activity can do wonders for motivation and additional thriving but it’s simply not used for some reason. The same thing goes for critique and any communication which can be considered „negative“ but should be done in proper manner. A „Good job!“ or „Great work today!“ or „Try to add this and this“ doesn’t seem like much to a manager but to an employee this would seem like proper mentorship in which they receive enough attention, training and work recognition. To add more benefits to it, the manager themselves builds proper work-etiquette, healthy business relationship and a company profile which can be an example of how to act.

Finding the balance in communication

Social interaction in the workplace is also heavily dependent on the familiarity between colleagues. There is a degree to which you let your information about private life out and balance it out to keep it on professional level; I discussed the risks of the balance in this article. The same thing applies to a manager and their subordinate. Having interest in the topics which characterize that subordinate is fine and should be used regularly to build company loyalty and appropriate wellbeing, not to mention the business relationship between them as aforementioned; we have to remember that people are social creatures and little to no familiarity can’t work in the positive way in the long run. Therein lies the challenge of not crossing the line of too much „friendship“ in the business relationship which can diminish the official roles, more specifically the authority and the sense of responsibility between the two. A good manager will be able to read social cues and know in which situations how strongly the tap can let the water out as opposed to when to shut it off.

Question frequently

Mentioning the lack of resilience in the beginning of the article is both a curse and a blessing, so to speak. On one hand, the newer generations require a lot of attention because they’re more opiniated and need a more structured care, and on the other, it benefits the manager because they too professionally develop in the areas which are important anyway, let alone the gradually increasing importance of it with future generations. Making sure that subordinates are tended to in many of the managing aspects is important to any manager. Questioning them is a very important activity because of the aforementioned characteristics of the person (extraversion/introversion) and if you have the latter, it becomes a must-do exercise. The benefit of it logically is the fact it builds the aforementioned mentorship traits which are universally desirable.

Takeaway

There’s no doubt that communication and feedback are one of the most important aspects of leadership but the frequency and a form of their usage are arguably equally important. Empowering employees on a daily basis in stressful environments is a must-do exercise if the goal is to build loyalty and long-term employee satisfaction, not to mention increased performance as a later result. Such activities should be on any manager’s to do lists if they want to preserve the team they have or build the trust fast with the new one. Such effect and behavior simultaneously build a role model for the aspiring company culture worthy of mention which is surely an added benefit for the overall performance.