A511.2.3.RB
- Supportive Behavior
Take
the opportunity to reflect specifically on Yukl's material on pages
63 through 72, Supportive Behavior.
Assuming
that these leadership behaviors are appropriate at all levels of organizations,
do you use these behaviors in your work with others? Subordinates? If so, how
are they effective in producing results? If not, could they be added to your
personal repertoire of leadership behaviors?
Supportive behaviors include, “show[ing]
consideration, acceptance, and concern for the needs and feelings of others.”
(Yukl, 2013) As a leader, showing compassion for a subordinate can help earn
trust and loyalty. Sincere efforts of supportive behavior will make gaining
buy-in and support from your colleagues a lot easier. When a leader takes the
time to build a relationship with a colleague or subordinate, suddenly that
person is more than just a payroll number or generic “carbon-based” resource. Some
of the ways that leaders can show support are, “showing acceptance and positive
regard, [p]rovide sympathy and support when the person is anxious or upset, [b]olster
the person’s self-esteem and confidence, [b]e willing to help with personal
problems.” (Yukl, 2013) Treating the people you work with or who work for you
as actual people with feelings and families is a huge step in gaining their
cooperation and trust. In our Incident and Injury Free training classes, we
like to say that a person doesn’t just leave all of their problems at the gate
when they come to work. Each person is made up of their personal experiences and what
that means to them at the moment. When a colleague blows up at you for
apparently no reason at all, it’s possible that they are dealing with something that is extremely difficult and their anger actually has less to do
with whatever you did and more about what they are working through internally.
Understanding this and cultivating open and honest relationships with the
people you work with is paramount to alleviating ambiguity and creating an
encouraging work environment. I tend to have the mindset that a leader isn’t necessarily
a manager so being supportive, isn’t a uniquely managerial behavior in my
opinion.
Other behaviors of supportive leadership
include mentorships and personal development. “The most basic principle of
mentoring is to have a genuine concern about the personal development and
career progress of subordinates.” (Yukl, 2013) It seems sad to think that this
need emphasis, this genuine concern requirement, but it does. Attention from a
manager and a subordinate is usually suspect until proven trustworthy. There
are managers have used personal information and kept career advancement from people
who have trusted them in order to advance their own careers or to exert power. (The
same can be said about co-workers but let’s stay on this path.) When I first
started at Boeing, I came across a blog by Dan Rockwell called, Leadership
Freak. I get a daily dose of this and it is remarkable how common leadership
issues are. One of the topics he tackled was intent, “Deluded leaders falsely
believe intentions automatically translate into behaviors. You intend to be
supportive so you must be supportive, right?” (Rockwell, 2013) This is where I
find myself coming to when reading the pages on Supportive behaviors. This is a
cynical take on it, but we all grew up with the saying about words vs. actions.
I think that I do use some of these
supportive behaviors with my colleagues. I’m not a manager but I do work with a lot of
college interns and train new hires. I’m not always the most patient person and
I could do better at being a more positive example though. Back in 1993, I started
working for Wal-Mart in San Antonio, TX. I was super excited and really wanted
to be there. On my first day as I sat in the break room filling out new-hire
paperwork, an employee came in, looked at what I was doing and made a comment
about being new. I smiled at her and told her that it was my first day and that
I was excited about it. She snarked, “You’ll get over it.” I was crushed. She
completely icked my wow. (She was right but that’s not the point.) So fast
forward to me working with interns and new hires at Boeing. I never want to do
that to them. Heck, I’m still excited that I get to work at Boeing! So I try to
be encouraging and sincerely helpful, at work and on a personal level; a lot of
the new hires have just graduated from college and this is their first “real”
job and are sometimes new to the area. I also work with them so that they
understand not only what needs to be done but why it needs to be done. I want
them to understand how they impact the factory systemically because that’s how
I was taught and it made an impression on me. Sometimes knowing how what you do
can help or hinder other people is very motivating. I’m not sure how to help
new hires with their career goals but I do try to encourage them to take
classes. I also encourage new hires to sit in on meetings and take notes, even
if they have no idea what the meeting is about because exposure is the first
step to understanding. I’m certainly not the only person who interacts with the
interns and new hires but I don’t want to be the one who icked their wow. We
have a couple of leads in our group that are really good at mentoring and
career planning as well as being supportive. I try to learn from them and hopefully one day will emulate
their behaviors when it’s my turn to be a lead. This all being said and reflecting on the aspects of supportive behaviors in leadership, I think that if applied sincerely and with genuine advocacy for colleagues and subordinates, it is an effective leadership tool. Most people would like to be recognized as being important enough to encourage and support, mentor and promote whether by a superior or by a co-worker. Supportive behaviors remove the ego from management behaviors and allow managers to see what kind of impact they have on other people and for a lot of people, I think that could be humbling.
References:
Rockwell, D. (2013, January 14) Popping the
Self-Delusion Bubble. https://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/popping-the-self-delusion-bubble/
Yukl, G. A. (2013).
Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
