How to be a Better Boss to Motivate Your Employees

Are You a Good Boss?

Let’s be honest with each other for a minute here – if you’ve got a boss, chances are you don’t like that person very much. They might be the best person in the world, but even the best bosses are disliked when push comes to shove. If you’re a boss yourself, however, you can minimize the negative impact of being a direct supervisor by being the best boss that you can possibly be.

Here are some ways that you can be a better boss that will have your direct reports doing a more effective job on the projects they are assigned:

Stay away from micromanaging.
When a supervisor micromanages an employee, it communicates a level of distrust in that employee’s performance. After all, how would you feel if someone was constantly looking over your shoulder, micromanaging you as you micromanage your direct reports? A micromanager creates a negative morale in a department that reduces the overall output people have. Be a good coach and educator instead and encourage independence in a project as much as possible and you’ll find that more work gets done with often a better overall quality.

Be honest with your direct reports.
No one likes a liar. Almost 30% of people who are planning on leaving a job, in fact, would actually stay at their current organization if they could just work for a different boss. You can be that different boss by maintaining a level of honesty with people. Sometimes honesty hurts, but it is better to tell someone they did a lousy job and help them to fix it rather than tell them they did an awesome job and force someone else to fix the errors in their work. This honesty will encourage your employees to give you honest feedback as well, allowing you to be a better overall boss.

Appreciate your employees.
Many direct reports don’t feel appreciated, but that feeling is expanded dramatically when they do something awesome and that awesomeness is completely ignored. I know an employee who saved the company over $100,000 in costs on their second day of work by changing the process of how work flowed. What did he get for his efforts? The expectation that he could repeat that process time and time again. Even a simple and genuine “Thank you” can motivate an employee to keep working hard.

Promote the reputations of your direct reports.
If people have stood out during a project, then let them continue to stand out throughout the completion of the project. Let them take the credit for a job well done instead of funneling it to yourself. It’s like being the head coach of a professional basketball team taking all the credit for the talent that a professional player has hone for the last twenty years – it just doesn’t make sense to keep the credit for someone else’s talent for yourself. The more you let people shine and stand out as a boss, the more people will want to work for you.

You can work on becoming a good boss starting today. Even bad bosses can turn into good bosses with just a little bit of work! Take these tips to heart today if you are a boss, share them with your boss, and you’ll be able to have the productive work environment that you really want to have.