The Perils of Trying to Be Liked by Your Employees

I know, sounds ridiculous. If people hate you, you can’t get their cooperation, you can’t motivate them, they won’t help with reaching the unit’s goals and frankly, it makes for an unpleasant and stressful work place. So there are lots of good reasons why you want to be liked by your employees.

But in a management position, you sometimes need to make decisions which aren’t popular with your unit. And in that weird way that is life, if you don’t make them, you’ll end up being disliked anyhow.

Let’s consider what would happen down the line if your priority was being liked by your employees rather than being respected.

Going for being liked

So, let’s assume that you’ve been supervising the unit for a couple of years and have bent over backwards to be popular with the staff. This has included going for a beer after work, accommodating the personal preferences of employees, doing some of the work yourself to relieve the load, always being pleasant, and avoiding criticizing whenever possible.

Let’s say you could be a fly on the wall for a conversation between two of your employees whom you thought liked you. You are she/Mia in the conversation.

Trading respect for liking

See what I mean? While being liked by your staff is important, so is being respected. Over the longer term, employees respect managers who make don’t allow themselves to be pushed around by other employees or units, who will deal with under-performing workers, and who can make appropriate and timely decisions. Doesn’t mean they always like the actions you take but, again over the longer term, they respect you for standing your ground.

The next post will replay this scenario to see how to avoid getting in trouble with your boss and still work toward respect from your employees.