5 Things Employees Need to Learn—From You

I am fond of saying that we learn from people, for I fervently believe that we do.

If you are a manager you must both learn and teach, and here on Talking Story you can expect me to speak to you often about how you can be a great coach and mentor.

From day one, there are 5 things an employee needs to learn from you, setting the stage for all the higher-level learning you want them to reach for as your coaching relationship with them deepens:

1. Why you hired them. Not as a qualified candidate for a job vacancy, but because of the values you share, in your eyes making them perfectly suited to a great working partnership with you. Elevate both their self-esteem and their sense of belonging. Shared values are your common ground, and a business-partner mentality can be your base camp. When employees clearly understand what they were hired to do, all future job objectives become much more meaningful.

2. How to work with you. Employees can’t read your mind any better than you can read theirs: Tell them straight up what your working style is so they needn’t go through the trial-and-error of figuring it out. Tell them which freedoms they have—and do not have—in pushing the envelope of change and newness with you. There should be no eggshells to tiptoe through: Landmines should be in plain sight.

3. How to talk to you. Don’t expect they will communicate effectively or completely with you when they haven’t learned enough about you to feel they know you yet, nor have their own “water wings” in the company to feel safe about it. Too many employees feel “put up and shut up” is the wisest strategy, or worse, is expected of them when that’s just not true.

4. How you expect the customer to be treated, both external customers and internal ones. As far as you’re concerned, exactly what is great customer service? Is the customer always right? —really? Not only must they learn how to work with you (go back to number 2…) they must learn how to work with —and for—the guest and customer, their peers and associates, your suppliers and professional network of relationships. There are ground-rules in all civilized societies: What are yours?

5. Your vision for the company. Not the canned speech and company line, but what it personally means to YOU, and how you strive to put your personal signature on it. Model the behavior you want to see; set the expectation that you’ll soon ask them what their personal signature will be. Bring the vision into sharper focus. Yes, it’s the future picture, but the future needs to get closer every day, and they’ve got to know it’s in their hands.

—Rosa Say

For more coaching on these concepts;

“We learn from people in the workplace.”
and, 3. How to talk to you.

The Daily Five Minutes was born from this core learning belief, and from the need to reinvent workplace communication. Over time, the D5M has continually proved to be an essential and highly successful tool in the Managing with Aloha toolbox.

If you are hearing of the D5M for the first time, read about it here. Then return to Talking Story for the index of D5M writings which appear here.

Managers who have learned to make the D5M their habit swear by it, and say they will never stop using it within their workplace communication. It appears in Chapter 11 of Managing with Aloha, within ‘Ike loa, “to know well,” the Hawaiian value of learning, which is “to seek knowledge and wisdom.”

Talking to your manager: Searched for and landed on here almost daily.

Another recommendation: Hey boss, what do you want to know? – Part 1 and Part 2.

4. How you expect the customer to be treated

“Is the customer always right? —really?”

The Customer is NOT always right

When I was a resort operations exec, that statement was one my employees loved hearing from me. They would say,

“Come on Rosa, say it, just say it. Just stop at the ‘however’ part.”

When you are in the customer service business you will inevitably come across the person who is simply a jerk and for some reason relishing being one at that point in time, and there is no satisfying him or her. … Continued here.

5. Your vision for the company.

‘Imi ola (definition link) is the Hawaiian value which coaches us on mission and vision. You will find this index to be one of my fuller ones here on Talking Story.

An article which created a good deal of discussion here and on other blogs is this one: ‘Imi ola; Form and Function.

This is another which tackles the business speak verbiage in most companies: Mission or Vision? Why choose between them?