Why your employees might hate you and what you can do to fix that.

Imagine going into work, you're leading the team, but you realize that most of the team hates you or they just, they're not very fond of you. Let's not use hate, hate can be a harsh word, but let's say that your team, they're not fond of you. You're a supervisor. You know that you're the first line of defense for them as a, frontline team and they're not having it. What could you possibly be doing wrong? Or I guess not quite doing right?

The first thing that you might be messing up is, are you a glory hog? A glory hog is somebody who, let's say your team is there, they're working overtime. They're working lots of hours. They're putting blood, sweat, and tears into an assignment, uh, a presentation and the big boss, the executive team, the stakeholders, the company that hired you to create the presentation, whatever, they're saying, wow, what a great job. Wow. We're blown away. If you are the person who steps in and says, thank you. I was on these guys hard. I pushed them. I did this. I brought this new information in. I made sure that Susie worked extra hard on this. I made sure Ralph stopped other assignments so that he could work on this. I did. I did… I'm hoping that you see the problem here. There's a whole lot of “I” going on when you're the glory hog. People are not going to be fond of you, especially if they are putting in all the effort. If the team is really doing all the heavy lifting, sometimes a glory hog is that, you know, that stereotypical loser manager in the corner office who doesn't show his face for days, weeks, but then suddenly, when the praise is coming, they show up in their suit and tie, ready to take on all the applause, all the great work.

If you're that person, you need to stop it! How do we stop it? Well, here's the fix for that? You first literally stop it. The praise is not for you. You have to understand that as a leader, the praise is going to your team. When Eve, when you're, when you're running a team and you are thanked, you are, you know, people are saying what an amazing job as a leader, you need to be saying, thank you. But it was all my team. Thank you. On behalf of my team, the, they went above and beyond. They were clutch. They put in the extra hours, they did the extra research. They found out this key piece of information. They put it together. You see the difference. You're sharing the praise. You're making sure that it's not coming from you. Everybody knows you're the boss. You don't have to share that.

You will stand out as an excellent leader to the executive team, to the stakeholders. When you make sure that your team is getting the, you know, the congratulatory words on your, like from you, you are the people that are watching you and are listening to you, brag about how strong your team is, how much they did those people know what a real leader is. And that is something that real leaders do. You're just a jerk. If you're coming in to take all the praise, you're the stereotypical, you know, <laugh> beat manager in the corner office that nobody wants to work for. Again, when we talk about these five things that are making staff, not like you so much, it's all fixable. If you want to fix it, and sometimes you may want to fix it. But if you don't know, it's a problem. Well, there's your problem. So I'm glad you're here. Let's get into the second thing. Or the second reason that your staff, they, they don't really like you.

Okay?

Mistakes. We all make mistakes. But as a leader that people do not like, when you make a mistake, it's no big deal. You replay “Oh, don't worry. We can fix that up. You know, I was working extra late. You know, this happened not a big deal.”  When you don't acknowledge your own mistakes yet on the flip side, you harp on your team's mistakes. You jump at any error. And you're the type of person that says, “listen, don't come to me with excuses”. You are immediately losing the respect of your team.

When you lose the respect of your team in short, they're not liking you. They don't respect you. They won't trust you. They might as well say, “I don't like you”. Now, what you need to do instead is when you make a mistake, you need to hold yourself more accountable than you hold your team. You need to make sure that you call yourself on the BS and that your team knows you screwed up and you're not okay with it. And most importantly you are going to fix it. The same expectations you have of your staff should be lower than the expectations you have of yourself. And that shows your team, that you are a team and that everybody makes mistakes, and you will be just as hard or harder on yourself then you will be on them. Now, mistakes get made. Like I said, do you have to be hard on your team? I guess that depends on what we're talking about. Brain surgery? Yeah. You might wanna clamp down on these errors, but if there's small errors, if they're things that are happening from one of your teammates or one of your staff members that is usually perfect as a great manager, you wanna be picking up on if there something outside of work that might be affecting them at work? Because it happens. We are people. As leaders, we're gonna have our own personal problems and we're gonna try to keep 'em out of work, but it doesn't happen all the time, stuff gets through the door and that's okay. But if it's caused you to make a mistake, make sure you own up to it and make sure you fix it and make sure you hold yourself as accountable more than you would to your team.

The next reason that you are not having the best relationship with your team is because you complain a lot. Nothing is ever good enough. “Oh, I always get screwed. I got overlooked for this promotion. Oh, why would they hand us this project? They know we're short staffed this isn't okay”. Nobody wants to hear it. If you're short staffed, your team already knows it. They don't need to hear it from you. They don't need confirmation from their leader that things are not going well or that things are not going to be going well. They need you to be a beacon. Now do you have to be a golden shiny Ray of sunshine all the time? No, of course not. But what you do need to do is you need to focus more on the positives. I have this trick and I shared it in one of my videos. I learned this so long ago and it was such a fantastic little, I don't even know what to call it. It's a gimmick it's really a gimmick but here's how it works. The idea was you put an elastic band around your wrist. Not one of them make honking ones, but just a little elastic band, put around your wrist. When you have a negative thought or in this case, when you think you're going to complain about something, stop, give yourself a snap, pull the elastic, snap it on your wrist.

Don't worry. You're not drawn blood. It's gonna leave a little bit of a red mark. But as you do this, if you do of this for 30 days and you catch yourself, either getting ready to complain or actually complaining, give yourself a snap and then rephrase the complaint in your mind in a positive manner, you don't necessarily have to snap your wrists and then say, “no guys, I didn't mean to complain”. You need to catch yourself and train yourself. After the 30 days, I promise you, your team will see a difference. They will see somebody who is looking on the bright side. They will see somebody who is focused on solutions. That's what we do. As leaders, problems get brought to us. Whether we like it or not. And it's our job to come up with the solution to make it work.

The next reason, why your team doesn't like you is that you’re antisocial or perceived as antisocial or perceived as rude. You come in with your jacket on, your duffle bag, your briefcase, whatever, your purse, it doesn't matter. Whatever you're holding, but you come in, head hung down, you go straight to your office, hang your coat up, close the door. And don't say anything. Can you imagine working for somebody like that? I don't have to imagine. I used to work at a place where nobody would say good morning. The simple art of saying good morning, a simple greeting to acknowledge another breathing life form in front of you goes a long way to building rapport. It shows that you are a normal civilized person. To walk into an office and not say hi? Listen, I get it. Sometimes you've got a lot on your mind. No problem. You can't tell me all day, every day you are so weeded that you can't greet somebody, you can't say how's it going? I'm not telling you to stop and grab a coffee and sit at their desk for an hour. That's a different conversation. What I'm telling you to do is just say, “good morning”, treat a person like they matter. And when you greet these people, they're gonna realize that you're actually a nice person and you're not antisocial and you're not rude. It's simple. It's ridiculously simple. And that's the thing with leadership. That's the thing with management. It's not overly difficult. When you put time into thinking, “how would a normal person like this to be dealt with? How would I like to be a on the receiving end of this?” It's really that simple.

And the final thing, and this kind of ties into being antisocial is that you always have negative body language. Now we're not even touching on resting bitch face, cuz I mean, I can have that face too, you know, resting a**hole face. But if you're always scowling, if you always seem angry, if you know your arms are always crossed, your jaw is always clenched. Your fists are, you know, tight. That's not welcoming. That doesn't make me feel like I trust you. It makes me feel like you're gonna snap any minute. It makes me feel that anytime I talk to you, it's an inconvenience because you are fighting a war that nobody else is aware of. So try to loosen up. Don't be afraid to unfold your arms. Don't be afraid to smile. Relax your forehead. Come on, listen, I don't know your age, but you keep that forehead wrinkled up... Well, you're getting wrinkles and they're gonna be deep. Trust me on that but work on getting those crow’s feet around your eyes. Smile as much as you can. And I'm not saying get that full grill of teeth showing. Just shining on everybody. But walk around, pay attention, open your eyes, have a relaxed smile. Like I said, negative body language ties into being antisocial. Use a smile. When you say good morning, it's not that difficult. What I'm talking about is very much “boots on the ground, roll up your sleeves”. We are managers. We are leaders. There's nothing profound about what I share. It's stuff you can Google. You can find it on the internet. It's how to treat people like people.

Take this into consideration when you feel that your team doesn’t like you.  Makes the required changes NOW!