Why liking people is not enough to make you a great manager

If I love people, if I really love mentoring and I love developing people, that will make me a good manager. And I hate to tell you that that’s a big piece of it, but it’s not enough. And this belief can actually be a trap because we might think, if I just give more, if I just listen more, if I just coach more, if I just do, you know, all the kind of things that I feel warm and fuzzy around, then that person is going to thrive.

Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast. I’m Leah Garvin, your host and team operations consultant. Through this show and my signature ops playbook, I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time, money, and stress. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business owner who realized that running a team isn’t as easy as you thought it would be, or a new manager looking to learn the ropes, or are a seasoned manager ready to up their game, everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple.

From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between. Let’s go. Welcome back to the show. Before we dive in, have you picked up a copy of my new book, The Unstoppable Team? It just came out and it is a resource and tool for you to get all of the insights and tools that I have shared with business owners, team leaders, entrepreneurs on how to communicate better with your team, make managing easier in general, set clear expectations, all the good stuff.

So you are not going to want to miss this. You can grab it on Amazon or head to leahgarvin.com slash the book to pick up a copy. All right, with that established, today I want to talk about one of the most common misconceptions that I hear from managers when it comes to managing their team. And first I will say, if you are guessing that the misconception is people will just listen to me if I tell them what to do, well that is definitely a misconception, but that’s not the one I want to talk about today.

I want to talk about one that hits a little bit deeper for us. And that misconception is, if I love people, if I really love mentoring and I love developing people, that will make me a good manager. And I hate to tell you that that’s a big piece of it, but it’s not enough. And this belief can actually be a trap because we might think, if I just give more, if I just listen more, if I just coach more, if I just do all the kind of things that I feel warm and fuzzy around, then that person is going to thrive.

And what happens when we have this belief is we can tend to avoid hard conversations. We may be shy away from giving difficult feedback because we’re worried about rocking the boat or hurting someone’s feelings. And with that, sometimes we don’t paint a picture of what success looks like because we’re just there kind of feeling like, I’m just going to support, but I’m not really putting any guardrails around that. And so I raise this because, again, if this is what you’re feeling like, well, I love people.

I love developing people. I thought I wanted to be a manager. I thought I wanted to hire people and it sucks. And I’m struggling with it. Well, that’s because it isn’t enough. And again, it is a great piece of it. It’s a huge piece of it. I think if you don’t like people and you really shouldn’t be a manager, so it’s a foundational element, but it’s like necessary, but not sufficient, you know? And so instead of just relying on that as the full kind of is all you need, I’d like to encourage you to add three other things along with caring with people, along with bringing in those coaching skills and mentoring skills and really being passionate about developing people.

You know, I want you to think about how you can weave these three pieces into your everyday of how you manage. And first and foremost, I know I’ve talked about this before, it’s really helpful to set an intention for how you want to show up as a leader. Hey, if you are a business owner, this might have something to do with your team values and some of the things that you’ve brought, you know, to the business.

If you’re a team leader in the corporate world, this may be, you know, really a lot based on what you want to do and what not to do from previous managers, but whatever it looks like. Thinking about how you give feedback. Am I direct? How do I want to receive feedback? Thinking about, you know, your availability, like what is your style as a manager? All of those things are going to really help you inform how you communicate with your team, and that’s what all these things are about, right, that I talk about.

These are communication tools, and when we don’t think about how we’re managing, a lot of times we just sort of are being ping-ponged around or dealing with a problem like whack-a-mole and we’re like, wait a second, this is not really how I would deal with this thing if I had thought about it, or we take a step back a few years later and we’re like, gosh, I really turned into a micromanager, or I’m really absent. I’m kind of helicopter managing.

I’m not really, this isn’t how I ever wanted to be, and I really love to set an intention because it’s something that we can come back to on a regular basis. Maybe we have a quarterly check-in with ourselves and say, hey, here’s my intention. Am I really living up to that? Am I honoring that for myself, for my team, and beyond? So that’s the first thing that I would say to do, but the three tools that I want to impart on you to try to get over this misconception that just because you like people means you’re a good manager, is first, you’ve heard it here before, we got to set expectations.

We have to set expectations with our team members around working norms, behaviors, communication norms, when to be in office, when to be online, how to track work, all of these things really paint the picture of, hey, this is how you do a good job on this team or in this company. Expectations are the foundation that everyone needs to know where they stand, how they’re doing. It’s the foundation for us to then give feedback on. And if we haven’t set expectations, just telling people, like, keep doing what you’re doing, it feels hollow, right?

And this brings me to the second thing we got to do. We have to give regular feedback, both positive recognition, appreciation, yes, and constructive. People, when we’re only hearing everything’s great, we kind of wonder, well, when’s the other shoe going to drop? Or we have our blinders on for things that actually aren’t going well that someone hasn’t told us. And while it can be really hard to hear something that, you know, we’ve been working on that didn’t go well, and I think it’s becoming harder and harder, unfortunately, in the workplace to share direct feedback in certain kinds of environments, because emotions can be high.

People are spread thin, people are burned out. So I will do another episode on how to give difficult feedback again, because this is one that never gets old. It’s always going to be hard, but we don’t avoid it. And we don’t avoid it because we want to be liked. And so that’s one of the biggest traps with this thing of, I like people, so I’m a good manager, is we fall into that people-pleasing zone, and we get afraid to deliver feedback.

We see something wrong, and instead of giving the feedback, maybe we clean up the mess behind the scenes. And I see so many business owners doing that. They’re going in and fixing the design file. They’re going in and rewriting the email. They’re going in and fixing the pitch for the client when they are paying people to do that job so they don’t have to be thinking about that. And so that’s why, from a team operations standpoint, this is really expensive for you, because you’re paying two people to do that job.

You’re paying your team member, and then you’re using your much, much higher hourly rate that you could be gaining doing something else on fixing that thing. Okay, so this belief that, because I like people, I’m a good manager, that can lead to people-pleasing, that actually becomes really expensive. And that’s going to keep you stuck and you more in the weeds than you need to be. Okay, so I said clear expectations. The second one is giving feedback.

And part of giving feedback, like I mentioned, is course correction. It’s feedback around something that’s not working. But until you’ve set those expectations, feedback will feel arbitrary. It might feel micromanaging, because someone’s like, well, what’s this even based on? So that’s why we go first on those expectations, and then we add the feedback. And then when we share feedback, because we’re demonstrating we’re invested in people, we’re setting expectations. We’ve been doing that coaching, that mentorship. We’ve been offering professional development opportunities.

Your team members see that you believe in them, and you want the best for them, and that is why you’re giving the hard feedback. And that’s what I’ll talk about in this conversation, more about feedback in another episode, because we don’t have to be afraid of giving feedback when we have set the stage for it through building relationship, through building rapport, through building trust, through setting expectations. Those are the conditions to have an effective feedback conversation.

And that can be scary. And sometimes we give feedback, and it doesn’t go well. Someone’s offended. Someone’s defensive. They say, well, it’s your fault, or whatever happens. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. And so that’s one of those things, I think, when we are wanting people to like us too much, we avoid feedback. And then our team members aren’t getting better. They feel like we’re not investing in them, because we’re not saying, everyone knows there’s something we should be fixing.

And we never hear that. We start to wonder, is this person really invested in me? The third thing we have to do to avoid this, just because I like people means I’m a good manager trap, because it’s not enough. It’s necessary, but not sufficient, as I said, is we have to have a culture of accountability. And again, I know I talk about this one a lot, because once you have those expectations, you’ve given feedback. Accountability is the follow through.

It’s, hey, do we just say things, and it goes in one ear, out the other? When we say something really matters on this team, do we follow through? When we say, hey, we’re not going to operate this way, and we have a team member that goes against that, do we take action? What happens there? Your entire team is watching you. And they’re going to see right through that you like everyone, and you’re nice, and you’re an awesome manager.

If you don’t follow through with accountability, they’re not going to like you back. And accountability, it needs a rebrand. The word has the most negative connotations ever, okay? We all are like, oh, out of punishment, blame, accountability. No. Accountability is ownership. And like I said, it’s follow through. It’s responsibility. And so these are all really positive qualities. And we rethink our definition and reframe that definition of accountability into ownership, into follow through, into responsibility. And we’re creating an environment where people feel like, oh, when we talk about something, it really matters.

When we make a decision, we stick with it, unless there’s a really kind of big reason to change it. We don’t just leave the meeting having agreed and privately disagree outside the room, right? That’s not the culture here. And when you do this combination of setting that intention to begin with, the clear expectations, the feedback, the accountability, you create the conditions for your team members to be successful, to be excited about the work. And then they trust you even more as that mentor and coach and person that’s really invested in them.

But again, you see, they have to go together. Because if we feel like someone really likes us and supports us, but they’re kind of like, they don’t really have a direction, and they don’t really know what success looks like, and our boss doesn’t really follow through on stuff, and some days one thing’s okay, and some days it’s not, then we don’t really feel like we have a path on the team. And so that’s where you get in that trap where you get along great with folks, but they don’t stick around.

Okay, so the last thing that these three strategies help with is retention. And that’s another time saver, another huge money saver, because there is nothing more expensive than high turnover. So again, when we talk about these things, and that’s why this is all what I talk about in the Unstoppable Team book, it’s all what I share with teams in the Ops Playbook program, is these different things around communication, and how we manage our teams, and how we make things more clear.

This is how we run a business that’s able to grow and scale and be more profitable, because we’ve corrected these little and kind of like tweaked these little pieces that start to break down communication that slows everything down. Okay, so again, this is a huge retention driver, because people want to be in a team where they know they can be successful. Okay, so commit with me right now, we’re not going to just lean on the fact that we get along great with folks as enough to be a great manager.

We also have to do these fundamental things, setting expectations, feedback, and accountability, and then that will give you the whole package. All right, again, check out the Unstoppable Team. It is available now on Amazon, on Kindle, paperback, and I just cannot wait to hear what you think. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing MidSimple Podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.

With that said, let’s spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it. See you next time.