Quote:
Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout
The coffee walk and chat is a great idea.
But keep it casual. A quick check in on employees to see how they're doing and not what their doing builds rapport and comfort level.
While you might not get any 'technical' stuff done. Showing you value employees, and genuinely are checking in "who was the weekend/the kids/common interest" will do so much more to help productivity than nose in their work ever would.
The parcel I'm at now I'm at the bottom of the ladder. Went from the top to the bottom. But I still do the same management things I always did. Check in, talk to the others, build rapport with the boss. Now I do this naturally anyway, it's not a scheme. But when things go sideways, I know they have my back. Same goes the other way too. I've reworked my schedule to help in the past, will do so in the future.
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I think this is pretty awful advice. Wandering around with a coffee chatting to people individually makes you come across as a disingenuous time waster, IMO. It literally does the opposite of improving productivity. Say it takes you a man hour every Monday to scamper around interrupting people to ask about their weekend, that's now two man hours because you have to double the time for every employee you've pestered. That's dozens of man hours wasted per year just doing this one ineffective thing. A conversation that comes about organically is totally different, but this kind of move reeks of social awkwardness and just looks like amateur hour spurred on by somebody who read the latest 'management 101' book.
It's unlikely anybody in the office will ask you to stop doing it, though, because who wants to put the brakes on the 'friendly guy,' but I guarantee you this is not a professional thing to be doing, particularly since you mentioned you are now junior in the office. Try just coming in and doing your work - you'll get much more respect and you'll always have time to catch up with people through the day and week at more natural, non-disruptive times.
Moving onto other things talked about in the thread, I know it's current best practice to do one on ones regularly, but my problem with them is I don't think most managers are qualified to coach their subordinates in any sort of meaningful way. It brings to mind the
Standford prison experiment whereby students where assigned to be prisoners or guards in a fake prison and quickly assumed their respective roles and before long (like literally hours/days) these unqualified 'guards' were power-tripping on their subservient 'prisoners.' When somebody is promoted to manager, I don't care how many lunch-and-learns they've attended, they're not competent enough to become anybody's mentor. Unfortunately, I see managers and employees acting like psychologists/patients in one-on-ones and it's very unhealthy.
Best way to approach being a manager is to structure things such that your employees can clock out at 4:30 to the extent possible and don't bug them on weekends and evenings to the extent possible. Model the behaviour you want to see, and allow people the time and space they need outside of work to be healthy individuals who aren't on the verge of burnout and under too much stress. Recognize that for many subordinates, this is just a job they have to enable them to build a personal life. Don't fool yourself into thinking your team is doing god's work.