Lead highly skilled, confident employees
Highly qualified employees are usually self-confident. So they also frequently question the opinions and decisions of their superiors. This is why managers sometimes find it difficult to deal with them.
Today, managers often no longer have an advantage over their employees in terms of specialist knowledge and experience. After all, the latter are not infrequently highly qualified specialists. These employees are correspondingly self-confident - especially when they know that the company depends on their expertise. Then they want to feel the appreciation they believe they deserve in their daily interactions. If this is lacking, their motivation to work declines and, in extreme cases, they change employers.
Communicate more and differently
Many managers find it difficult to lead such self-confident employees - partly because some have still secretly internalized the credo that their instructions must be followed blindly. But many members of the so-called Generation Y, who were born after 1980 and already form the backbone of many companies today, see things differently. They often question the instructions and decisions of their managers and want to have what they see as plausible reasons why certain things are necessary.
For managers, this means: They must communicate more and differently with their employees than in the past. Instead of top-down instructions, what is needed today is the inclusion of employees in decision-making processes. If this is not possible, managers must at least accept that employees will sometimes question their behavior as well as their decisions.
In theory, most managers are well aware of this. However, this does not mean that they always display the right leadership behavior in everyday work. It is often the case that supervisors, especially in situations in which they themselves are tense, display behavior that is more in line with an authoritarian than a cooperative leadership style. As a result, they not infrequently cause avoidable conflicts.
Employees "tick" very differently
In the day-to-day work of teams consisting of many self-confident employees, one also notices time and again: Managers never actually have problems with some employees; however, conflicts constantly arise in the relationship with others, which is why the employees in question are mentally labeled "difficult" by their managers.
If one analyzes the causes for this, one often finds: If the manager-employee relationship is right, then the managers usually have
- A similar value system to the employees with whom they harmonize well, and/or
- their behavioral preferences correspond to the expectations employees have of their manager based on their value system.
This is different for the "difficult employees". They either have a different value system than their manager, which is why other things are important to them. Or they have expectations of their manager based on their value system, which the manager does not fulfill due to their preferences.
Knowing different value systems
The divergent value systems and expectations are usually not a problem in day-to-day operations if managers are aware of them. However, many supervisors are not even aware of their own value system and behavioral preferences. And this is even less the case in relation to employees. Yet this is becoming increasingly important for successful leadership - not least because fewer and fewer people today are prepared to accept without question any authorities they have not chosen themselves.
If supervisors want to manage their employees individually and according to their value systems, they need to know the following:
- What makes my employee "tick"?
- How does the world look through his "glasses"?
- What does it need to perform at its best?
Only then can managers truly adapt their leadership behavior to their counterparts. Moreover, only then can they reach a sustainable agreement with each employee on what he or she needs in order to experience his or her work as satisfying because it is meaningful and corresponds to his or her value system.
Author
Joachim Simon, Braunschweig, is a leadership trainer and speaker specializing in (self-)leadership (www.joachimsimon.info). He is the author of the book "Selbstverantwortung im Unternehmen" (Self-responsibility in the company) published by Haufe-Verlag and co-founder of the (self-)leadership coaching app Mindshine (www.mindshine.app).
