Making Employees Fearful
When staff fears management, it makes them unhappy about coming to work. Studies show that happy workers are more productive workers. It also makes them feel like they can’t approach their managers about an issue. This can be dangerous for a company because when that happens, the company cannot address the issue and it may be affecting more than one employee and come back to bite them.
High Employee Turnover
Another side effect of unhappy employees is high turnover. High turnover costs a company on a lot of levels. Not only does it cost money and time in hiring and training new employees, but it also results in loss of knowledge.
Damaged Company Reputation
When management acts unprofessionally and anyone who is a potential customer witnesses it, it can be detrimental. This goes for on the clock and off the clock. When you first read that, you may have thought of that manager saying something inappropriate, posting something controversial on social media or acting a certain way, but lack of professionalism can be as simple as a manager having bad grammar. All of these things can reflect poorly on a company and can affect your brand.
Lack of Training
Coaching and training are important in a management role too. A manager has to be willing to hire people that have different strengths than they do, so they can accomplish more. They need to be willing to put the time in to train those employees, so they can delegate tasks to them. They also need to be able to give constructive feedback. When this doesn’t happen, employees can lack trust and motivation because they lack a purpose.
Lack of Communication
Whether it is communication within departments or across departments, there has to be communication to make sure efforts aren’t being duplicated and resources aren’t wasted. But the most important reason communication is essential is to make sure everyone is “rowing the boat in the same direction” so to speak. If goals are communicated and efforts are collaborated, companies can accomplish so much more, faster and better.
Leading by Example
All of these items boil down to leading by example. If a manager works hard, their employees are more likely to work hard for them. If a manager holds themself accountable, their employees will likely be accountable too. If a manager acts unprofessionally, uses their phone to make personal calls throughout the day, or even just has a poor attitude overall… You guessed it… Their employees are likely to take on those characteristics as well.
When there is no accountability, no team, no training, no communication, high turnover and unhappy employees, you are going to accomplish much less as a whole. When your employees aren’t invested in you, they aren’t invested in their jobs and therefore your products and services are going to suffer. Your brand is very likely going to have a poor reputation all because of poor management.