Should leaders know about the personal lives of their teams?

– By Rupert Turton, Business Growth Specialist & Executive Business Coach

I recently had an interesting conversation around whether Leaders should know about the personal lives of their teams and the importance of getting to know them. My latest article investigates just how much you should know about your team members. 

Leaders should know their team

There is no doubt in my mind that leaders should know their team! After all,  you are spending a considerable amount of time with each other so you should and hopefully will build a strong relationship with them. Let’s face it, what are you going to talk about if you don’t know anything about them? Which football team do they support, how many children do they have and what is their favourite TV show?

From a management perspective, if you don’t know a little about their personal life how can you empathise with them. Knowing something about the personal circumstances will likely give you an insight into the fluctuations in their work, there are a lot of things you may otherwise not be aware of! Kim Scott in her book ‘Radical Candor’ talks about building Real Human Relationships which are more than just professional. Obviously, in a bigger organisation it becomes increasingly difficult to know everyone, so you are likely to know your management team and key staff at best.

We interact with everyone differently

We all know everybody has a different personality. Look around your own team, there will be the people who are happy to just get their head down and deal with their work, there will be the people who just love to chat and want to discuss everything. Some people want to help everybody while others are only interested in the result.

Different people like to be communicated in different ways, some like very direct communication while others want as much background as possible. What is driving them – the task or the impact on others? Your role as a leader or manager is to communicate with them in a way that is most effective for them, for which you must know them as a person.

Many of you will be aware of “the Poo Sandwich”, where you provide positive feedback on either side of a more contentious issue. It is a tool used by many, however, to give meaningful, challenging feedback when it is required you need to build a real relationship. This is what Kim Scott calls “Radical Candour” and to do that you must have a positive relationship with each team member.

If your team feel that you do Give a Damn about them, they will be more comfortable giving you feedback

It goes the other way too! Your team must feel they know you well enough to give you feedback, which will not always be good! It is very hard for an employee to criticise their boss if they feel it may endanger their job, and thus their income, family, house, etc. If they feel they have a good relationship with you, they will feel more comfortable giving you tougher feedback when it is required.

The question is really what is an appropriate level of interest in your team’s personal lives?

That very much depends on the individuals concerned. Kim Scott describes a scale of relationships from what she calls Pseudospeciation, to Professional, to Love with Common Human Decency and Apathy along the way. As a Leader, you need to “Care personally” and “Give a Damn”.  Where you are on the scale will vary depending on what is appropriate for the people involved. Most people give you a pretty clear signal if you are straying too far into their personal life so make sure you are watching out for the signals!

More remote working requires more focus on good leadership

As a final thought, coming out of COVID a lot of companies are moving more to remote working, in this environment, it will be very easy for Leaders to slip into a dictatorial way of working. Remote working requires more focus on maintaining relationships. More focus on effectively communicating what is going on in the business and how that impacts each individual. Leadership will become a much more important skill in a more remote world. Don’t forget to allow time to get to know everyone in your team and for them to get to know you when you are meeting via zoom!

Mine is just one viewpoint

I’m pretty clear in my thoughts on leaders getting to know about the personal life of their teams.  I think it is very important but do take heed,  the leader still has to maintain a level of separation, after all,  you are still their boss and disciplining your friends is very difficult!

If you would like to talk about how you can get the most out of your team contact me at rupertturton@actioncoach.com