Do Your Employees Like You?

You may well be dealing with individuals who still hold more senior positions in the company. It may be that you disagree with some of their key decisions, but find that you're not in a strong enough position to influence them. They may feel that your own staff should become more productive. You, on the other hand, may struggle to inspire your own staff members if you don't have much faith in the overall direction of the business.

If you own the business then things may be different. For starters, you won't be having to worry about the decisions of senior management. Instead, you'll be the one charged with making all of those key decisions. But this also throws up its own problems.

You may struggle to keep staff members happy, motivated and productive. You may have to take some decisions that are right for the business, but which are likely to prove unpopular with employees. This can certainly make things difficult. It may make you unpopular on a personal level.

Some people in management positions struggle to deal with this situation. They find it extremely difficult to think that they are actively disliked. Faced with such concerns, they may take drastic steps to try and become more popular. One problem that you may face is that you may not really have a clear view on where you stand. That's because staff members may not be too keen on giving an honest appraisal of your performance.

So what's the answer? You could decide that being popular is not something that's important to you. You may feel that the best approach is to ignore the feelings of individuals. Even if it were possible to achieve this, it might not represent the best course of action.

It's usually the case that unhappy staff members are lacking in motivation and produce poor results. This can clearly have a negative impact on the business as a whole. You may feel that some people are too hard to please. This is something that many managers may conclude.

Your challenge, of course, is to try to ensure that your employees are highly motivated. You'll need these productive individuals if you want to get the results that the business needs. So it is worth thinking about your own popularity. Could you improve the situation and have a positive impact on the profits of the business at the same time?

Motivating staff is about identifying that you have an issue and then looking to solve it.