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Do you need to like your staff?

It’s often said that staff are a company’s greatest asset, which is then often corrected into a more appropriate sentiment that “a company’s greatest asset is its good staff”.

But what constitutes good staff?

Obviously attitude, ability, experience and all those other traditional employment values are relevant here while there is plenty of conjecture over just how important each of those qualities are, when employing good staff.

But here’s a question not often answered.

Do I need to like the people working for me?

Gulp!!!

Human nature is such that we can’t like everyone and we know that not everyone likes the boss, so it’s also a fair assumption to make that most employers don’t necessarily like everyone that works for them. But is that a problem?

I believe that the Managing Director/CEO/Boss should be setting the tone of the company’s direction and manner in which the company operates. They should be ensuring that the environment and culture of the company is the best it can be under their stewardship. The good leader ensures that their employees ‘buy into’ the direction, manner, environment and culture of the company. The good leader also ensures that the goals of the company are clearly conveyed, understood and agreed to by the employees.

But often I hear managers talk about their staff as if they’re from another planet.

Recently a CEO of a large nationwide company told me he hadn’t attended Friday night drinks in over 3 years as he had nothing in common with the people that worked for him.

Personally I find that incredible and pretty offensive and think it says more about him and less about the employees of his company.

I use a really simply rule of thumb when I’m recruiting staff that will ultimately report to me or have a close association with me.

Will I enjoy seeing them every day?

Of course we go through a robust recruitment process and test prospective employees in all sorts of ways, but ultimately my final decision does come down to whether I want to spend my working day alongside these people.

Because, if I wouldn’t, why would I do that to myself or them?

This entry was posted on April, 2009 and is filed under Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.