As I said in the previous post. I am making two points here. One is that leaders back their people when the going gets tough. The other is that successful leaders never give up.
Now back to you. What do you do when one of your team members gets into trouble?
One of the worst things you could do as a leader is to leave one of your team members behind when they need you most.
Ask yourself, what do the following people all have in common?
• Adolph Hitler
• Nelson Mandela
• Margaret Thatcher
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Winston Churchill
• General George S. Patton
• General Colin Powell
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Jack Welch
They all are or were leaders.
So your comment might be:
“Wait a minute! I agree with most of them, but you can’t call that mad man Hitler a leader!”
Take a look at the different types of bosses out there. And ask yourself if any of these sound familiar:
Above our level – He walks through a department and never says a word. Acknowledges peers and superiors, never subordinates.
Never cruises – You are never going to see him in your office because he never leaves his own office.
Turf battles – Does not get involved in battles and does not want to make any enemies. Instead, kicks that ball upstairs.
Ain’t in the book – If he can’t find the answer in the manual, it can’t be done.
Think back to when you first became a supervisor. Did your view of your boss and his job suddenly seem different? Did you now have a tendency to think about his role with a little more sympathy? Probably.
Your decision process and the way you look at things as a supervisor will be different than it was before.
All of us have been in a position where we have wondered about our boss. We may think: “Where the heck did she come up with that idea?” Well, it likely came from her having a wider perspective of what was happening in the workplace than you did. Just as you now see things as a supervisor a little differently than your team does, the same applies to your boss. She has access to more information and more resources than you do.
Conflicts among team members are going to happen. They’re also going to be tough to solve. As an HR professional, you will be called upon to either give advice on how to resolve a dispute between two employees or you will be asked to take a direct hand in resolving a dispute among several employees.
The tough part is coming out of the situation as an impartial leader and not one who appears to side with one or the other of the parties.