How to Bond With Your Employees Without Compromising Your Authority

Are you struggling to make connections with your employees? This article from Entrepreneur has great tips and TBM Payroll wanted to share them with you.

How to Bond With Your Employees Without Compromising Your Authority

The most successful managers understand their responsibility for employee engagement and recognize how good employee relations contribute to a flourishing company.

Setting expectations.

Setting general expectations creates a frame for a positive working relationship. As a manager joining a new team or welcoming a new employee, you should set aside the time for a one-to-one discussion to discuss pain points and success factors.

It should be a two-way discussion, with the employee having space to ask questions and make requests of their own.

Managing performance.

Early on in the working relationship, you should establish a set of specific key performance indicators (KPIs) designed to help the employee understand what will make them successful in their role.

KPIs should be specific, measurable, realistic and with agreed review dates. The same applies to feedback on performance. Broad-brush statements like “not good enough” or “must improve” are meaningless if an employee doesn’t know how they can improve.

General communication strategies.

Effective managers build a cohesive work environment by interacting and engaging with employees. For example, taking a genuine interest in what employees want to share is an excellent place to start.

Allowing your team members to share what they wish to, without pressing for additional details, builds trust and sets a tone for open communication.

Long-term commitments.

Incentives work to ensure employees become more invested in the success of the company. This may be financial — bonuses or salary increases — but it could also mean extra time spent on coaching or providing training and development opportunities.

Effective management is challenging, but not impossible.

Over the years, I’ve learned that regardless of the company, management is an inherently difficult position — but it’s not an impossible one.

By setting expectations, adopting a healthy flow of communication and identifying long-term goals and priorities, it’s possible to create a constructive work environment that is a safe and fun place to be, improves your relationship with your employees and ultimately allows everyone to thrive.

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