The following is an excerpt from my book, Leadership Starts (and Ends) in Your Head…the rest is detail.
Chapter 3. Employees Don’t Work for You
Ask employees to list the things they “work for.” I guarantee managers will not be at the top of that list, if they make the list at all. The following is generally what employees are working for:
- To earn a paycheck
- To make a living for myself and/or my family
- To experience the challenge
- To grow
- To have fun with my coworkers
- To create something bigger than myself
- To be a part of an organization that shares my values
Ironically, if you ask a lot of managers to describe their organizations, they will often tell you how many people they have working for them. Really? How is it that employees are working for a whole list of things other than managers, yet managers list how many people are working for them? How can this basic premise of the relationship between management and employees be so disconnected?
Is it just semantics to say that employees don’t work for their managers; they report to their managers? Quite the contrary. It’s critical for managers to realize that their employees merely report to them. Employees take direction, seek motivation, look for clarity, look for support, and often look for permission or forgiveness from their managers. But they don’t work for their managers.
Great managers actually work for their employees. The managers’ focus should be creating environments where their employees, and by extension, their businesses can be successful. This means that managers are, first and foremost, service providers to their employees. Managers are responsible for ensuring that any obstacles to great performance are removed from their employees’ paths. These obstacles may come from outside the organization, or, as is often the case, the biggest obstacles will come from within.
What are some obstacles to great performance? It can be as simple as the climate control in the office. It may be too cold or too hot for employees to concentrate on their work. Employees may be struggling to get their jobs done with faulty or worn-out tools. How about the work environment that has an employee who disrupts the rest of the team or isn’t pulling his or her weight? All of these are examples of issues managers need to be aware of. Not only that, managers need to take swift action to eliminate these barriers to performance, in service to their employees.
And that’s just it, if managers are paying attention to the needs of their employees, they will be able to move quickly to help their employees succeed. After all, an employee’s success is the key to the organization’s success, and, in turn, the manager’s success.
© 2014 Bob Dailey. All rights reserved.
Encouragement is Personal 
I have had some great managers and some really bad ones through my career. The bad ones I would hate to even think I reported to them. It was more like trying to out survive or out last them and hope for someone better to eventually replace them. There were a couple that I had who set such a high example of leadership and selflessness that I would do anything for them and the team. Its a matter of not just believing in the mission statement but willing to go all out and live it because the manager walked the talk.
There’s an old “axiom” that employees don’t quit their company, they quit their boss. The opposite is also true.
Managers who serve their employees are generally the most successful (and happiest).