Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

I think my employees see me as a buddy rather than a boss. Is that a bad thing?

Being a buddy not a boss with your employees is not a good idea. It inhibits you from making tough decisions and exercising your legitimate authority to get things done. Sooner or later you will find yourself in the position of having to make a decision that your employees do not like or need to provide them with some tough feedback on the quality of their work. If your relationship with them is that of a buddy you may find yourself backing off because you know they will not like it. That is not to say that you can’t be friendly and pleasant in your interactions with your employees – in fact you should be, however you should create some distance between you and your employees which so that you can take managerial action when you need to. A way of changing the nature of your relationship with them is to change your interactions with them. Keep some distance between you both at work and socially. Treat people fairly and consistently but make sure that they know what you expect of them. Become a leader! In the long run your employees with thank for it because everyone appreciates good leadership.

Posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Boardroom, Entrepreneurial, Human Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.