By: Ana Margarita Olar| Executivechronicles.com
As a leader, you have a tendency to become so engaged with deadlines, achieving goals and setting new objectives. What about your relationship with your employees? Do you observe their behavior while you’re around? Are they aloof, quiet, or afraid? Then, it must be really lonely at the top.
Here are some things that you can try to overcome isolation:
No. 1 Leave your comfort zone.
Be the first to reach out to your employees. This is the first and crucial step to overcoming the feeling of being alone. Make yourself more approachable but still respectable for the employees. Start making that connection and interact with your subordinates.
No. 2 Connect with other positive minded leaders.
Find yourself a group of other leaders that you can share your experience with. During a business or company meeting, set aside some time to talk about what you are feeling. Share your issues and concerns about being a manager. Having a group of people where you can let out a steam will be a great relief over the feeling of being alone.
No. 3 Seek out for advisers, coaches, and mentors.
This could be anyone from colleagues, past professors, and other supervisors from your company. The important thing is for you to find someone whom you can trust and can offer you advice or tips on how they have overcome isolation on their own fields. Sometimes it’s not only their advice that’s important but for you to have someone to talk your feelings with.
No. 4 Cultivate your communication skill.
You need to establish good interpersonal relationship with your employees while still maintaining professionalism. There is a thin line that separates getting along well with your employees and subordinates at work, and going out with them at a bar or getting drunk with them. The former is good, but the latter is a no, no.
Always seek to improve your communication skills so that your employees will be comfortable when talking to you while still maintaining respect and regards to you as their leader.
Maintain open, ongoing and constructive conversation with your employees. Make your employees comfortable in regular meeting and communication with you. Again, make yourself approachable.
Encourage your employees to ask questions regarding the tasks assigned to them. Convince them to have a feedback regarding the issues being tackled. Provide a nonjudgmental environment when communicating with your employees.
Being a manager has its own set of pros and cons just like being an employee. You need to establish a balance between your managerial role and your relationship with your subordinates.
Finally, you also need to balance between your professional life and personal life. Remember, you have other responsibilities aside from being a leader; you are also a friend, a spouse, or a parent.
Establish a barrier between being a boss and being a person so that other important relationships in your life will not suffer.
