You want your team to feel that you understand them, you want them to be able to talk to you about anything, you want to be seen as a member of the team, willing to get your hands dirty along with everyone else. You don’t want to seen as one of those ‘distant, uncaring’ managers. You want to be their friend as well as their manager.

Although the reasons behind this approach is laudable it is dangerous to forget that a manager is often required to do what a friend would find difficult to do. In these constrained economic times that might include making the hard decision about selecting people for redundancy. Or, more positively, deciding on ‘rewards’ such as pay rises, promotions and, finally, let’s not forget the managers’ responsibility of giving necessary critical feedback. (more…)