by Timothy Justice

Created on: March 02, 2009

Over the last several years, we have seen employers and supervisors try to run their business by being popular. Being popular is great if you need someone to go out to the movies with you on Friday night. But in the professional world, it should never be the focus of a manager.

Now this doesn't mean you have license to be a jerk. You can be an effective manager and not be known primarily as a person who is "liked" by their employees. Inevitably, if you are fair, efficient, and professional, you will make enemies. Sometimes your employees may not like your decisions; sometimes it may be your boss or a supplier who takes issue with the decision you make. Making decisions (a required skill for managers) will almost always involve leaving someone not completely happy. The trick is to do it in such a way that they don't feel targetted by your behaviour.

I have always believed that the perfect manager is someone you love if you are doing your job right, but hate if you are not. And if a manager is managing with ethical business principles, that should be true of all managers. So while some employees in the workforce may like the manager, others may be less than friendly towards them because the manager is holding them responsible for doing the jobs they were hired to do.

Then there is the issue of personal friendships. If a manager is too close with his/her subordinates, the rest of the office is likely to pick up on that and any decision, even an impartial one, that is cast in the favor of that employee will be considered biased, even if the accusation is completely untrue.

But the flip side of all of this is that you can't manage an office where the employees don't respect you. If they all believe you're a jerk, they're likely to not get things done in the hopes that you will receive the fallout. Because of this, a wise manager will maintain a balance between being nice to their employees while still being firm.

It is important that a manager be ethical, efficient, professional and impartial as much as possible. But being "liked" is not part of the job description and never should be. If a manager does maintain ethical, efficient, and professional standards as well as being relaticely impartial, the respect usually follows, at least from the employees that are worth keeping.

So while it is not important that your employees LIKE you, it is EXTREMELY important that the ones that make the company run respect you enough to get their jobs done.

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