04/03/2025
6 Ways to Take Interest in Your Team.
By Ayiga Patrick Obita, Monday, 3rd March 2025.
Patrick is a Management Consultant at The Manager Resource Centre, a firm offering a comprehensive range of management solutions for your problems or challenges, aimed at showcasing management excellence. Please get in touch for our diverse management services.
In Management, people are central. Management is about people. People control the systems, processes, assets and equipment. Their performance is mostly dependent on emotions. They have feelings and so want to connect with those they work with. They want to share their lives and aspirations. People need reassurance that they are valued and that any interaction is for their good. This is valuable because everyone wants to be cared for and to feel that they matter. Their welfare being first, they will give you their loyalty. This interest should be genuine because it’s easy to notice a plastic one.
Word of mouth is the best medium to take interest in the people you work with. Words have the power to create positivity or negativity, spur one to action or inaction, lead to change or no change, respect or disrespect, etcetera.
A manager once decreed that everything should be in writing, even a simple issue. This dampened the mood in that office. There was no talking between the Manager and the other staff. Imagine how laborious it was to write whatever you had to say or ask. Yet, you could explain it within a few minutes.
In these interactions, you could also seek information on other issues. Why do we want to be “mean,” for lack of a better word? You might have the evidence but lose the team's trust and loyalty. This shows that there has to be a balance. Therefore, there were many delays in meeting performance mandates, stressed and very unhappy staff, and a toxic working environment.
In taking an interest in others, you are receptive to their ideas, respect them and their contributions, are there when needed most, provide a listening ear to their issues, and put your staff first before others (not God though, at the workplace). You also enjoy working and being with your team members, planning together on vital issues of the team members, seeking feedback from them and what needs to be done for improvement as some of the parameters you could use. This needs being interested in the wholesomeness of the staff needs. This does not mean you cross boundaries, which keep you intact, especially your dignity and self-respect.
What can be done then?
Therefore, you can practice some of these approaches to show interest in the team members. They are simple, yet neglected by most managers.
1. Greeting.
Greet in the morning and not a few, but everyone. We tend to greet those with authority either at our levels or above us. When a Manager arrives in the workplace, he or she enters his or her office and expects everyone to come to greet him or her. This has to stop. Greet everyone from the security guard or gatekeeper to the sweeper, receptionist, messenger and everyone. Go to their offices, say hello, and find out whether all is well with them and their families. This helps break the tension or stress that the people might be having. You set forth the right emotions for the day.
Caution should be taken with your bodily expression that shouldn’t say something different. Don’t also greet when you think you are in the mood; it should be a daily routine and not only when you are at work but even outside working environments.
2. Create Time for Chatting.
Another method is to create time to chat with your team members, such as during tea and lunch breaks. These chats can be about personal life, work, or any interests they might have. You might not like some of their hobbies; however, show concern that you are listening to them. This will help you learn their aspirations, areas of growth, and strengths as you find ways to support them.
This is a good avenue for creating rapport with your team members, getting to know them deeper and connecting. Most Managers don’t know the background of their team members, and yet this is very important in how you can manage them effectively and efficiently. The ways the staff behave have a lot of bearing from their upbringing, which you can know mostly through chatting with them. If you need a high and consistent performance from your team, get to know them individually.
3. Telephone Your Team Members.
Give a phone call to the team members, say over the weekends and don’t talk about work but how they are doing, how everything is, their family and themselves. This brightens up their day. Find out whether they are practicing their hobbies and interests during their free time. Advise them or share how you do yours and get much benefit. Inquire how their businesses are doing or if they are brainstorming to have one.
However, when it is not a habit, when your calls come through, especially during the weekend, jitters enter into the staff. They start wondering what it is that you want to tell them about work, yet it is a weekend. I have been in such a situation before that the staff I called told me she was expecting me to give her work. That was when I realised the need to call my team members not about work but to find out how they are doing.
4. Encourage them to further their careers.
Chat with them about the best alternatives. Support them in that direction even if they want to get out of the organization. Allow them to use you as their referee for educational or job searches and recommend them for the opportunities they are seeking whenever you are required to do so.
For those that will move on to other job openings, appreciate their efforts while at the workplace and wish them the best in their next endeavours. Assure them that in case they need your support, they should not hesitate to contact you.
If none of the staff has ever contacted you as their reference, especially direct reports, know that there is a serious problem with you that you have to find out and immediately work on it. You can improve it by changing your ways to gain the trust of your subordinates.
Some Managers give very bad recommendations for their subordinates who have chosen them as their referees. If you think you will not be in a position to give a good recommendation for a subordinate, don’t agree to be their referee.
5. Get Involved in the Festivities of Your Team Members.
A Human Resource Officer made it a point to attend the weddings and burials of the staff. She would go to any part of the country to be there and show support. The interesting bit is that you often found that the line or direct supervisor or manager of the staff never took part in these festivities. How do you think your staff will feel? You will not get the kind of loyalty from them because of the lack of care to celebrate or mourn with the staff.
So, I'd like you to be involved in the activities that the team members do both at work and out of work. This shows that you are at their level and that you care about them.
6. Genuinely pray for your team members.
It is said that prayers break chains of bo***ge and set forth God’s blessings unto our lives. Therefore, pray for your team members. I have never had a supervisor who never tried praying for the people who reported directly to him. He even went further by forming a prayer group so that we could pray together through teleconferencing.
Thus, ensure that you take an interest in your team because the benefits are immense, and it’s a great approach to making you a people-centered manager.
The Manager Resource Centre is available to support and walk with you towards the exhibition of management with distinction. Get in touch for some of our management courses, such as Manager for Life, Management Acumen, First Time Managers, Lower and Middle Managers, Management Coaching, and Management Advisory Services. Contact [email protected] or +256 776 521701 to get started.
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