It’s always risky for employees when managers are “too nice” and don’t give clear feedback about expectations, preferences, or necessary improvements. In effect, these managers stand by as employees go off the track rather than helping them stay on. Below are some typical scenarios:
- Some managers don’t want to upset a good employee over something that’s not really a big deal. This view is particularly common when “good” managers in “toxic” environments try to buffer their people from difficult or dangerous colleagues and conditions. The manager thinks: “How can I possibly criticize their work when they’re already under so much pressure?”
- Other managers are so grateful and relieved if a failing employee improves even a little that they forget that strong, solid performance is necessary, and that just a little bit better is usually not enough.
- Caring managers can be so wary of hurting anyone’s feelings that they incorporate everyone’s view, including inexpert and inexperienced opinions. Similarly, they may resist taking action if the team has not reached consensus although it’s rarely productive to wait until the least committed or most fearful team member has come around to the majority (or the leader’s) point of view.
The Department of Lost Causes
Good people tend to believe that a group that works together will always figure things out for the better, and that people will naturally step up and improve. And that may be true when you have unlimited time and resources and very little pressure. But you can’t shield people from natural consequences forever. And if you only shield them without developing them, you actually deny them the opportunity to rise to the occasion, and to improve and grow.
The risk for employees is that a too-patient manager is usually too patient only until the dam breaks — or the camel’s back breaks — and the manager has had enough. The frustrated manager may end up tuning out the legitimate needs of other people and situations, stalling productivity even further.
Get the Team on a Better Track
In the long run, clarity and kindness are more effective than just caring and concern. So instead of being “too nice,” be sober and analytical and identify the business’s real needs. If you were trying to hire someone for this job today, would you actually hire the current incumbents? Do they have the potential to develop into the role, and to continue to progress and benefit the business for at least 12 to 18 months?
Check that they agree with you about what they’re expected to accomplish. If there are expectations for how they’re to accomplish it, make sure that they agree with that too — don’t assume that they understand what you mean. And then verify that their behaviors match their claims. Make a concrete plan with milestones so you can actually track their performance in 30/60/90 days or three/six/nine months. That way, you — and they — can see their trajectory clearly.
Instead of being afraid of ever hurting anyone’s feelings, try to rein in your sense of personal sympathy in favor of structured, disciplined thoughts about how to help employees be fully successful. Being less personally involved in their challenges or woes doesn’t require you to be less compassionate to them as human beings.
What do your employees need to progress? Do they need more than you’ve been giving them? More than you can give them?
No matter how “nice” you want to be, when there’s tangible success, you can support more people through the process of learning what they need to do.
Onward and upward,
LK