Managing Smart—New Year's resolutions, delivering unwanted news, helping grieving employees and more

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Managing Smart

Become the manager you always wanted.

Dec. 13, 2023

Many of us follow the tradition of making personal resolutions for the new year. But should you also make resolutions for the workplace? A lot of us spend more time in the office than we do at home, so keeping those resolutions could have a huge impact on your quality of life—and, if you're a manager, on the lives of your staff.

Perhaps now more than ever, we realize just how much current events impact our everyday lives at work. The COVID-19 pandemic brought that home in a huge way, upending the very basics of how—and where—we work.

Concurrent upheavals in electoral politics and social movements have likewise seeped into our professional lives, leaving managers to handle new levels of discontent and conflict in the workplace.

Today's managers say they and their teams are experiencing an unmanageable amount of anxiety and burnout. Taking time to think about practical resolutions that can address and improve employees' work lives can benefit everyone mentally and emotionally.

Here are five New Year's resolutions for 2024 that today's managers should find to be worth their investment.

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Don't Blame the Messenger

Your organization's upper leadership has just announced a new initiative that you'll be responsible for sharing with—or "cascading" down to—your team. While your peers in management are excited about the upcoming change, you're already dreading making the announcement to your team, because you know the employees you supervise won't like it (or may not understand it, or won't have time to implement it, or will assume it's a waste of time, or … well, you get the idea). The point is there's a lot of griping and pushback in your future.

Worse, you also may not understand or agree with the directive you've received. Too often, middle managers feel pulled between senior leaders (who expect them to execute their directives) and their teams (who count on managers to look out for them). It's a tough position to be in.

That's the bad news. The good news is that you're not just a mouthpiece for your leadership. You're a translator who has the ability—really, the responsibility—to ensure that first, you understand the message, and second, that you convey it clearly and effectively to your team. Through what you say and what you don't say, you can drive employee buy-in, engagement and productivity—or not.

Here are five best practices that can help you understand, translate and deliver messages that you and your team might not want to hear.

When an employee experiences the death of a loved one, their manager and colleagues often reach out: They send flowers or a condolence card, or maybe they attend the funeral or bring a casserole to the co-worker's house. But once the initial shock of the loss fades, the employee likely is still grieving, and the holidays can be especially hard. Here's how managers can support these employees over the long run.

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Help Remote Workers Become More Engaged

Legal and employee relations problems can arise when remote workers are less engaged than onsite employees. The solution might not be requiring those employees to work onsite, but to train managers to hold remote workers just as accountable as onsite employees and ensure that employers are listening to all workers' concerns.

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