Care and let Care

I distinctly remember when the head of ad sales kept bringing in the erosion of sales personnel to the CEO in review meetings  but never once had any strong recommendation coming forth from the Boss.. Except that  he would say, "I understand your concern. Make sure you do something about it".

How many times in our growing professional life would we have lost personnel at ground level or at the immediate subordinate level  or really had tough situations in tackling them and found ourselves in a whining mood to our bosses. And many times the only support from the bosses would be " You need to handle it".

 Well, its true.. But while we realise this truth in a calmer mood do we really know why our boss said so.

I have been observing this situation in many organisations and have fallen into this cycle myself  though very early in my career.  While , each one can do a bit of an observation to understand what I am talking about, it is imperative to understand the real meaning and method how to convert this into an advantage.

One absolutely sane superior of mine did bring it to my senses the following:

1. As the ultimate boss, he /she is only interested in only in the interests of his immediate reports.  So the first level needs to worry about his next level. and so on. 

2. Encourage your first level to care about their first level.

3. Anticipate and make sure a you have a plan to handle it.

4. Guide to take action but keep the  interference minimal.

Try and not interpret this approach as non- committal or an hierarchical issue or lack of concern for lower levels..

What it means is while your first level knows you care for them , they also learn to do the same by mirroring to their next level. Really, my own experience of retention has been good but at the same time and definitely helped in developing able managers. 

It also gives your direct reports a sense of non-interference from you which I feel  is most critical in  handling personnel. 

Yes, it helps in building effective managers  and strong organisation structures and also lets each managerial level focus on their respective jobs.