By now you must have understood that being a boss is not an easy task to do and maintaining a cordial relationship with your team is even more difficult. There has to be a lot of trust and a high level of understanding required in order to maintain a respect in this relationship. Anything you do or work upon as a boss lays a greater impact on your team. Just like a father-son relationship, you have to be really careful about how you portray yourself at work, manage work and behave with your team, colleagues and even with your own supervisor. Remember, your portrayal of a bad boss can lead to a high attrition rate, decreased productivity and peers behaving awfully with their own juniors. Don’t be surprised later with what is happening as you started it and paved way for more negativity to mark its foray in the team. Here are 5 similar habits that are putting everything off at work and within your team. It is time to take note of them and correct them as soon as possible:
Your Habit of Acting Flattery
It is alright to be disciplined and obedient at your workplace. However, taking this to a servile degree can portray you as a flatterer and extremely obsequious. When your behavior reaches to this level, you lose dignity and respect that you once earned in your team as a boss. Your team members will stop taking your words seriously and the moment you appraise someone, they would take the situation in a negative way, thinking it to be another venture to please your superiors or managers. Moreover, the colleagues who are your direct reports will show up depreciation in terms of productivity, efficiency and timeliness. This habit is not just running your own image but is also disturbing the peace within your team. Remember, you get what you give out to the universe, therefore, make sure that you are doing it right.
Your Fear-Inducing Behavior
Nothing is as easy as becoming a tormentor at your workplace and ultimately oppressing the team like a dark ruler. Doing things like, writing people up and threatening your subordinates’ jobs becomes that easy for you. However, by doing such things, you aren’t proving your accountability. You feel that nothing whips an employee like a hard task master at times but believe it, this disengages your team altogether. Your people would work with an aim to save their jobs and hoping that you never catch their mistakes ever. This is straightaway a definition of a bad leader who is not guiding his team but rather ruling it. Remember, if you are approachable then your team would perform well and not commit disastrous mistakes.
Your Habit of Playing the ‘Blame Game’
Being a boss and heading a team isn’t an easy task. You are a human being as well and it is alright to make mistakes. When you are on a leadership position, it is natural for you to feel big and behave like a king who is replete with everything that makes him perfect. However, you fall prey to blunders at work and then out of your ego sometimes, you don’t accept them and try covering them up by either blaming others or suppressing them. This is a wrong approach and can impact your team as well. Remember, you can reciprocate goodness into others if and only if you are right in your actions. Try admitting your mistakes and your team would also be following your footsteps. Reporting mistakes at the right time can also assure a smooth workflow in office.
Your Habit of Insulting Your Direct Reports
You may find it fun to crack jokes and pull someone’s leg within the team or you may find alright to describe an incident that you perceive as funny. However, workplace communication is a two-sided job and you have to be clear in it, both in terms of emotions and information. There is always a time and place for everything in this world and workplace is certainly not a place for mockery that goes out of your limit. Your team members would not take this habit in the right sense and can also stop responding to you and your behavioral trench. With this, you lose all the respect that you have earned in your tenure and your people at work would not be able to relate to you in any way. A fear of being a topic of jibe would stay in their minds. Remember, laughter is good but not at the cost of someone’s respect.
Be good to your team and try not to crack whip at workplace, no matter what. Play it smart and be a boss at professional end.
Earthy and Natural 