and the Happy Office
By Julie Adamen

Through the course of my national speaking engagements I've had the opportunity to visit management companies across the nation. It is and has been loads of fun, very instructive, a great way to get back to my roots and really mix it up with groups of portfolio managers and their executives. Within my travels, I was struck by one office in particular because they were the happiest office I had visited or heard tell of in a long time. The staff works together and also plays together - laughing, joking, sharing work problems, and commiserating about the ups and downs of the job. It was as if stars aligned and exactly the right people were in the right place; all had a sense of common purpose. I marveled at their interaction and when I came home I still thought about it. What was it that set them apart? How did they all get there, and who was responsible for this happy office? Their leader. Not just their boss, but a true leader of people. It's the leader who sets the tone for the office or company. And when those stars do align, it's because the leader is trusted by the staff, to be fair, responsive, to utilize their people's strengths, to believe in what they do and, most importantly, to trust that staff right back. Then the stage is set for a happy office. Let us look at some the important factors.

The leader is fair. Fairness excludes politics and includes parity, i.e., the leader doesn't play favorites in promotion or compensation, nor make snap judgments out of ignorance or frustration that have a negative effect on the staff. They listen, weigh, and then proceed. The staff trusts the leader to be fair not just by them, but by the clients and the business partners. This "fairness factor" makes the company a very desirable place to be employed, which works for all: Fairness can decrease turnover and increase productivity and give the company a good "street" reputation. ¹

The leader is responsive to the needs and issues of the office. One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize and deal with a problem before it becomes an 800 lb. gorilla. Problems are faced and dealt with, not ducked, blamed on others or ignored. The trusted leader knows that ignorance is not bliss, and ignored problems become exponentially larger as time goes on. Allowed to fester, unsolved office problems are a deathly and eroding force in the trust between the leader and staff, leading to lower productivity: If the boss doesn't care to fix the problems only they can fix, why should the staff care to do their job to the best of their ability? From there, an all-too-familiar downhill slide to mediocre management services.

The leader communicates clearly. There are no mixed messages or mumbled missions from the trusted leader. The staff knows where the leader stands on any issue and thus knows where they stand with the leader and within the organization. Clarity of communication means clarity of purpose within a company. Lack of mission and policy clarity leads to disarray, competing agendas and a general malaise that is at the heart of so many of our organizations. The trusted leader and their clear communication prevent much of that from happening.

Right people, right place. We've all worked in offices where people have been terribly miscast in the roles they have been assigned with the results anywhere from mildly intolerable to disastrous. When it's the latter, feelings of betrayal towards a boss can linger a long, long time. I once worked in an office where a power-hungry control-freak (the boss's secretary) was tasked with proofreading minutes written by the managers for spelling errors and typos. This heady experience led her to critiquing margin width and page number placement just to prove she could. Thankfully it was soon over, but it took months for the staff to stop calling the boss a jerk behind his back. Conversely, a happy office has the right players in the right place: The marketing person is congenial, outgoing and never met a stranger. They're also a self-starter who presents well, always makes other people comfortable and enjoys mixing and mingling. The head of accounting is a detail-oriented person who performs well within a structured work environment that is product (financial statement) driven, yet is able to communicate plainly to staff and executives.

The trusted leader knows whom to hire, whom to promote and what role individuals should take on. In short, they are sensitive to the complicated working environment they are creating. They don't put people in positions to which they are unsuited and cause extra work and lower morale for the rest of the staff, or otherwise cause undue harm to the office because they value the trust placed in them by the staff as a whole.

The leader must believe in what they do. How is belief of purpose a trait of the trusted leader? If the leader doesn't believe in, or is unclear of their mission, the staff is continually insecure in their role in accomplishing the mission. Insecure staff means they will have to be continually driven to do the job with negative, "do this or else" reinforcement. That's autocratic leadership, not trust-based leadership. The trusted leader believes in what they do and that belief telegraphs down to all staff members. The leader takes us where they go, and they go willingly. "A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position." ²

Trusted leaders reciprocate trust. The leader trusts staff to do their jobs with limited and appropriate guidance, input and oversight. They don't micromanage the staff or implement regulations or controls that are counter-productive to the morale of the office with little provable production worth. Negative controls and regulation only signal to staff they are not to be trusted to do their jobs, and on a deeper scale, the boss is out of their depth. "A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves."³ And that is done through trust.

The Happy Office begins and ends with trusted leadership.
Greater and more learned minds than mine say there are 5 qualities of leadership in a person: Honesty, inspiring, forward-looking, competent and intelligent. To paraphrase, the skill at exhibiting these five qualities is strongly correlated with other's desire to follow their lead. It will inspire confidence in that person's leadership. And not exhibiting these traits or exhibiting their opposite will decrease their leadership influence.4 I believe if you polled the staff members of the happy office I visited, they would certainly agree their leader has these traits. And they trust that leader implicitly because of them, and in addition to them.

From a corporate standpoint the right leaders bring in profit, keep turnover down and sign new accounts. From the happy office standpoint, the right leader does those things mentioned and also engenders trust among the staff, implicitly and explicitly. With that trust in place, staff will move heaven and earth to carry out their leader's, and concurrently, the company's mission with grace, humor and professionalism.
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I'll be straight with you. Sitting here at my desk day after day, interacting with many dozens of managers and company executives, sometimes... My faith is shaken in how we carry out the mission of professional community management. Will we ever get out of the Mom'n'Pop-on-steroids mentality, or are we destined to fight the same fights over and over again, mimicking the general pattern of the associations we manage? Yet - when I see the happy office, when I observe its staff and its leadership, I come to realize there must be hundreds of you out there quietly going about your jobs in such a way that restores my faith in what we do and how we do it.

Happy Office: Thank you for the lovely experience.
1. http://www.leadershipturn.com/
2. John Maxwell
3. Unknown www.brainyquote.com
4. www.leadership501.com

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