4 Tips for Managing Employees Who Don’t Like You
Introduction
Being someone in authority, like a manager, comes with the risk of some people not liking the way you run things. It is important to remember that this is not always because you are doing something wrong. Sometimes, the issue may simply be that people enjoy gossiping about authority at work or that the employee does not want to do much work. Here are some key tips to help you manage employees who don’t like you.
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The Reality
It is inherently impossible to please everyone around you and remain well-liked, especially when you are a manager in the workplace. As a manager, you are in charge of enforcing the work tasks and giving employees tasks to complete.
This situation can be compared to a teacher that is not liked by students for the amount of work they assign or the difficulty of the work. This has nothing to do with the teacher’s actual skills. Assigning difficult homework challenges the students to use the skills learned in the classroom to apply to trickier problems. This leads to stronger growth of the student's abilities to use the information learned.
As a manager, it is your job to help your employees become the best that they can be and to foster growth within your workplace. These two components can lead to you being spoken about by the employees, in both a positive and negative manner. Some people will appreciate your willingness to challenge them to improve, whereas others will not be interested. However, you are doing the right thing when you are guiding your employees to greater success.
Tips to Get Through
Take Time to Self-Reflect
Spend some time during the workday to reflect on your expectations of the employees and your recent interactions with them. Try to discover whether your methods are working, or if you need to seek new ideas to implement within the team. Identify whether your interactions with employees have been relatively positive, or if you have noticed some negativity with the team. Use some of the following suggestions to implement in your reflection time:
Journal about what meetings with employees have been like
Think of a new leadership tool to try out with your employees
Look for the reasoning behind the actions you have taken in the workplace
Review The Secret to Ensuring Your Employees Are Not Overworked to look for signs of overwhelmed employees
Remove Personal Biases and Assumptions From Your Leadership
Personal bias can dwell within the workplace, even if you actively attempt to remove it. Do you think an employee may not have the technical skills to complete a certain task because of their age, so you continuously assign these sorts of tasks to younger employees? You may not realize that the older employee knows about this, and the younger employee may not have great computer skills despite being younger. In these situations, reflect on your employees’ mastery levels of different workplace skills. Then you can work to improve the skills of all your employees to make sure everyone who can be completing a specific task has the tools to do so. Think of creating the following:
Playbooks of how to do some tasks relating to software
Office hours for employees to come ask questions about tasks
Ask the Employees What They Need From You
Allowing opportunities for employees to give you feedback or suggestions will demonstrate your willingness to lead on their behalf. When you do this, expect to receive negative feedback, but you can look for ways to improve through their comments. You can ask for feedback in the following ways:
Send out an online form for feedback
Ask the employees in a meeting
Give your employees a paper copy of a feedback form to fill out for you
If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you can begin by ending meetings with the following phrases:
“What can I do to support you?”
“Let me know how I can be of support to you.”
Don’t Let Employee Comments Affect Your Leadership
At the end of the day, you may be unable to please everyone. However, it is important to brush off the comments and continue to manage your employees in a way that will make them grow. You know you want what is best for each of your employees, and to do this, you must tune out the negativity when necessary. To overcome this, it is important not to spend too much time dwelling on the negative and trying to find solutions to problems you don’t fully have all the details regarding. Instead, stay focused on the work and the well-being of the employees. Remain engaged in the meeting and positive, which will show the employees that you do not crumble under any negative pressure.
Conclusion
Be prepared to hear negative comments from employees, as it is out of your control at times. However, remain positive and continue to support your employees’ well-being and growth. Doing so will show your employees that you are invested in each of them and have strong leadership abilities.
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