Here is part two of the top mistakes managers make. These mistakes relate to our topic of discussion, focusing on relationships between managers and employees. 

The next one, number four is: Focusing on the negative. If you are focusing on the negative with your employees, you’re going to find out that life can be very difficult. Employees are going to follow where you go. They’re going to follow what you do. They’re going to follow what you say. If you focus on the negative, that’s where they’re going to focus and that is what you are going to hear.  If you turn it around and focus on the positive, they’re going to focus on that. So, focusing on the negative is a huge error. Unfortunately, we tend to want to constantly beat on what’s wrong, to constantly want to work on what isn’t right, under the theory that if we fix all the problems everything will run great.  There is a time to work on challenging things, on negative things that need to be worked on. But everybody was made with a set of skills, everybody was made with strengths.

If you know your employees, you will know their strengths. By using their strengths, you will get a lot more done than trying to fix their problems.  God gave us strengths to use along with other people’s strengths.  One of your challenges is to find them, bring them together and produce the multiplied result that is available.  This will cause you to increase your relationships with your employees.  Multiplication comes through relationships.

The next one is: Failing to have a service attitude. I mentioned this before. And the next error goes right with it, “It’s all about me.”  It is not all about you. If you’re leading and managing as if it’s all about you because you’re sitting in the office behind the desk, and people come to you and talk to you, you are on a path to limited success. It may look like it’s all about you. It is not. If you think it is, think again!  That is a huge error. We will be talking about why you need to maintain a service attitude.  It is likely more important than you think.

At this point I would like you to think about something.  Write down what you believe your strengths are and what you believe your weaknesses are.   As we continue, we’re going to come back to these questions. At this point in time just write these down. Don’t do anything else with them.  But as far as you’re concerned, how do you answer these two questions?

What are your strengths?

What are your weaknesses?