Communicate openly.

Great managers know that communication is not a one-way street. It’s a dialogue. It’s a conversation. And they know that much communication is nonverbal, which means that the most important part of the conversation doesn’t occur on the telephone or at a staff meeting but on the factory floor or in the conference room or in the cubicle. Great managers communicate openly and visibly and in all directions and at all times.

When it comes to communicating upward, great managers have a special need to be visible. They need to be seen and heard, and they need to be seen and heard by everyone—not just the top-performing employees but also the weakest. This is because they know that the weakest employees are often the ones who benefit the most from seeing how the top performers do their jobs. The great manager knows that the best way to nurture self-assurance in the weakest performers is to make sure that they have as many opportunities as possible to see and hear how the best do their jobs.

When it comes to communicating downward, great managers have to be careful not to micromanage. It’s a common trap for a boss to want to tell the people on her team how to do their jobs. She has specialized knowledge and experience that they don’t have, and she’s very comfortable exercising her power to tell them how to do the tasks that they’ve been hired to perform. But this doesn’t mean that she should.

The great manager knows that the best way to build self-assurance is to let people do their jobs. She knows that the best way to do this is to ask questions rather than to give answers. She knows that the best way to ask the questions is to get out of the way and let the employee solve the problem. She knows that the way to do this is by asking questions that can be answered with a yes or no.

The great manager understands that a yes-or-no question can be answered only by the employee who is in the best position to know the answer. The great manager also understands that a yes-or-no question can be answered only by the employee who is in the best position to act on the answer. So the great manager asks questions that require a yes or no response and then steps back and takes a hands-off approach.

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  Photo by August de Richelieu.