About Lisa McKale

“Just be honest with me.”

Have you caught yourself in one of these conversations with an employee?

Whenever a manager feels the need to cajole an employee into being honest, there’s a larger problem at hand aside from guilty fibs or little white lies.

It might be that members of your team are afraid to be totally honest with you. Why? The hidden reason could be coming from your company culture – or even directly from you!

Some leaders don’t want to hear honest-to-goodness assessments because they might also have to hear some bad news. In some cases, opening themselves up to honest assessments from employees is as welcome as a root canal.

And employees almost always pick up on the sense that the unfiltered truth may be less than welcome with certain bosses, managers or other colleagues, especially when there are critical decisions on the line.

They create a “don’t go there!” rule in their minds and self-censor when being honest means a critical or negative response.

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“I feel like I’m not getting through to them.”

“Don’t they hear what I’m saying?”

“They just don’t listen to me!”

Any time we try to teach and can’t get employees to catch on, it’s frustrating.

We pride ourselves on being good coaches. So, when we can’t seem to get employees on the same page, it saps even the most patient manager.

But before pinning the blame on the employee, consider that the problem could be coming from you.

A crucial part of coaching is to play to the person’s strengths.

It’s useless to coach a 350-pound lineman to be a fleet-footed wide receiver. It helps to think of your employees the same way.

“Coach employees to their strongest abilities and the lessons will pay off,” says David Lee, founder of HumanNature@work.

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Successful managers get to the top by knowing how and when to effectively delegate. Being able to use your human resources wisely makes both you and your team better.

But when the time comes to delegate, you might find yourself doing a delicate dance. It’s your job to delegate work, but it might not be obvious what tasks should go to which employee.

One option is to fake it: Gather your team together, outline the project tasks to be done, and let your employees choose what they want to be responsible for.

It might be easier, but it’s less effective. Why? Because employees respond better when they feel they’ve been chosen for a particular task, rather than having to volunteer for it.

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It happened again: You started a useful discussion with an employee, and before you knew what happened, your “talk” spiraled quickly into bona fide argument territory.

And you only asked one question!

So how did it get there? It might be because you didn’t put the brakes on once you felt the speed pick up.

Communicating what we really want to say is everything. The minute we start padding, ducking and buffering our way through a discussion, it’s easy to slide into argument quicksand.

Communications consultant Marlene Chism calls these arguments “verbal ping-pong,” and says that people often get trapped into playing unexpectedly.

Managers know it’s a huge time-waster to argue endlessly in a back-and-forth when two people want to win and keep coming back for a rematch.

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One of the top perks many employees demand these days is that elusive “work-life balance.”

What that often means is a flexible schedule or the possibility of working from home or telecommuting.

Research on remote versus in-office workers has found those who work at home can be more productive. In 2013, a Stanford University study of call center employees found a 13% increase in the productivity of at-home workers.

But even if some employees want it, you still have to ask are they ready for it?

There are plenty of examples where the transition to working from home goes smoothly, but it’s not the perfect fit for every employee, says Mandy Gilbert, founder and chief executive of Creative Niche.

Managers need to have a keen sense of how their employees work and interact before they make the decision.

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