The relationship that a manager has with their staff is always going to vary. It’s difficult to deconstruct that barrier between employer and employee, and in many ways it shouldn’t be broken down at all.
While you should work to build up a trusting relationship that supports a trusting, friendly and comfortable atmosphere, the nature of your dynamic is not one of friends.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should treat them with hostility at all, especially when it comes to trying to inspire them or improve their work ethic.
You are collaborators, and that should mean that you can both get excited about the direction of your work together.
Encourage Discussion
Part of the difficulty that can come with a less trusting workplace is that employees don’t feel as comfortable sharing their honest opinions due to a fear of backlash.
For example, if the direction that you’re currently championing isn’t working, you want your staff members to tell you what about it isn’t working so that you can all make the necessary improvements.
If you didn’t need them, you wouldn’t have hired them, so creating an environment where collaboration is celebrated might be worth your time.
Exciting Tools
Outside of the emotional elements of the workplace, your team members are going to be able to think much more creatively about what kind of work they can do if they have the right tools to do so. Obviously, this is a financial issue, and you will be restricted by what your budget allows.
On the other hand, if this is your core operation, investing some money so that your team can work with the right tools can lead to a more exciting process.
If it comes to APIs, for example, they can allow your team to be much more versatile in their development approach, but you have to first work with them to determine whether to opt for Postman vs Insomnia.
Positive Feedback
When things aren’t going right, it’s easy to point out what the problem is. When you’re all working together in a fast-paced, stressful work environment, it might even become easy to criticize each other and identify problems all around you.
However, this isn’t constructive unless it comes with solutions and might start to impact the morale of the workplace.
Therefore, providing positive feedback regularly can help balance the books and have people feeling more confident in their own abilities.
Promote Teamwork
This might sound strange given how often workplaces promote the abilities of staff members to work as part of a team.
However, when it comes down to the practical nature of working, you might find that discussion often strays into talk not related to work, which you might think to clamp down on.
This could be a mistake, as you could be restricting the kind of comradery that could lead to your team members becoming stronger co-workers.
If they feel comfortable around each other, they might be more open and honest with each other throughout the process, leading to stronger collaboration.
