Do you think that recently your employees have been less responsive when it comes to communicating with you, while they used to answer your call or email in seconds? Do they also start slacking off in the office, such as coming late to the office periodically, or even fail to show up at important meetings on time? If you find this behaviour done by your top performers, then you should be cautious: you might have lost the respect of your employees.
Respect is a key element that ensures a successful and long-term leadership. If you want to be a great leader, the best way to earn respect from employees is to show that you also respect them. By doing so, there will be a mutual respect where both the boss and the employers can work hand-in-hand in harmony to create a solid teamwork and create better communication.
Instead of being a fierce employer who controls the team by instilling fears to motivate and keep employees obeying your words, it will be better to be a nice boss who gains positive respect from the people working for you. The problem is, many are trying to no avail in managing a team because the employees have lost respect and trust in their employers. To make it worse, sometimes they do not realise that they have lost control over their employees until they find their best employees turn up with a resignation letter.
Then how do you know when your employees have secretly disrespected you? Here’s how:
See: To Cure the Toxic Culture: What to Do to Employee Who Always Come Late
Tardiness is among the commonest signs telling that your employees might no longer care about their job or boss. When you realise that one of your employees starts to show indiscipline behaviours such as coming late on scheduled meetings and going disappeared as they please during office hours, they might not want to linger in the same room with a boss who they secretly dislike.
In a meeting, observe your employees’ response towards the presentation or anything else that you are trying to convey. Are they listening to you attentively, or getting bored and not too interested in your speech? When you are done and then inviting them to give some feedbacks, opinions, or ideas, are they enthusiastic about sharing what’s on their mind, or do they just keep silent? When communication becomes one-way and your employees tend to stay silent all the time, then you need to introspect yourself to see if there is anything wrong in the way you lead the team that they no longer respect you.
When assignments and reports are made half-heartedly by employees who usually give their best performance, you need to contemplate yourself. When team members seem no longer motivated to finish their tasks or reluctant to follow your direction, they might have lost reasons to obey your commands. You can tell this sign when your employees say simple ‘yes’ to your requests, but you can see an unhappy expression on their face.
One time, you were passing a group of employees chatting in the cafeteria during lunchtime and deciding to approach them. Once sounded so festive and festive, the group suddenly became so quiet when you join in the conversation. Moreover, they show awkward signs and gestures and openly dislike your presence there. If you find something similar, your employees might be talking about a secret they do not want you to know because they do not trust you. This is when you need to contemplate and find out if there is something wrong with your leadership style.
Read also: What’s Distracting You at Work?
