How to Become a More Likable Employer5 min read

We can all agree: it feels pretty good to be liked by people. At the office, we aim to complete our tasks but we also want to make friends. As a manager or employer, you’ll find that it can be quite difficult to juggle your professional responsibilities and remain likable. Luckily, we have some helpful advice for you to guarantee your likability around the office! And hopefully, it will prevent people from leaving your company.

Leadership and working with others

When ot comes to management and leadership, employers have all types of approaches and they work (or don’t work) depending on the employees in their team. Here are the main six that you’ve probably seen before:

• Visionary: Here, the employer inspires employees through the promise of a better world
• Coaching: The coach offers different solutions to apply and try
• Affiliate: For this kind of employer to thrive, everyone needs to agree and feel good about choices
• Democratic: What do you think of this idea? Expect a lot of votes from the democrate leader
• Pace-setting: If you work well under pressure, then a pace-setting employer is great
• Commanding: Orders can relieve some employees of the stress that comes with decision-making

As a manager, you need to analyse your employees before you choose your style. To see what works best, you can try each one in little doses. Here are some additional questions you can ask yourself: do my employees work well as a team? Are there many diverging work styles? How do they handle negative feedback? How do they handle pressure? What motivates them?

If you can find the right leadership strategy for your employees, they’ll not only respect you, they’ll find you more likable.

In addition to leading, an employer is a part of the lives of  those under his or her management. Whether you want it or not, you affect their personal lives and their personal lives affect your business. You don’t have to share values but you do need to be compatible on roles. You need to   together, collaborate and resolve conflict. Often, this level of compatibility can be reinforced through challenges and competition for male employees and a lot of recognition for everyone. Be a part of the challenges and struggles.

Relatability and encouragement

You can make more friends by improving people’s moods. This involves invoking times when they were already in a good mood. Mention things that are associated to happy memories. You also become a part of the good memory and they are conditioned to enjoy your presence. This is true at work too for the employee and employer relationship.

If you can find previous examples of a job well done when giving advice and feedback to your employees, you should start with that. You can never give too much good feedback to show employees that they are capable of bigger and better things. Furthermore, they’ll think of you as the employer who made them become a better version of themselves.

When you have them on your good side, you can also make them understand you’ve been in their shoes. Not only will you be an example or model for them to look up to, you’ll be more human and relatable.

Employees into Friends

Among your employees, you may have some people who like you and some who don’t. To solve the problem of having some hostile personnel, you can take a page out of Benjamin Franklin’s book by giving your “enemies” some small important assignments. This special assignments or favours should not be too complicated or too easy but they need to be select. If your employees do something for you, they’ll have to justiy this service by admitting you’re not that bad after all. You can also find a way to show them leniency and kindness so that they have  agood opinion of you.

Another issue you may have with employees could involve your similarities. It’s not just about relating, it’s about having some conversation topics. You can keep it light and fun. There may be a lot of pressure in trying to share values but sharing little fun experiences is easy! From the moment you meet your team, make them feel like friends! Make them feel liked! It’s the best way to move forward with a solid basis. Becoming comfortable with each other is the first step in building a rapport.

Finally, no one likes to feel cheated. For that reason, you need to ensure you aren’t asking your employees to do too much overtime or too many difficult tasks. For employees to like you, they need to feel respected.

Negotiation and team work

Even if you are the employer, you still have to give and take in a work relationship. Both parties need to feel great about the deal. That is the key to a successful negotiation. And there are two techniques: the foot in the door technique (ask for something small and build up to a bigger deal) and the door in the face one (ask for something big and then accept a bit less). This technique can be used in salary negotiation or when explaining projects.

Your employees all have special skills and they really appreciate recognition. So make people feel like experts. They are experts and they need to hear it sometimes.

Keep in mind that a group is harder to win over than an individual. It can be difficult to understand everyone and it is even more difficult to juggle what everyone wants. Make sure that everyone feels heard and that no one feels that there are different groups within the group. The “us versus them” mentality can be a big risk!

We hope you have enjoyed this article on becoming a more likable employer! You can find additional advice in this article from Medium. Leave us a comment below.

Sources: https://www.rts.ch/info/culture/series/12230864-la-reunion-lepisode-special-de-la-serie-friends-est-disponible.html

https://reussir-son-management.com/exemple-de-leader/

https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/like-icon-in-flat-style-icon-thumb-up-vector-22509758

Author: Ali Neill

As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website’s social media pages.

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