Help your people and don't be a dick and you'll be amazed at the bounty of unearned gratitude that comes back around -- and often not just once, but continuing for years. Being a good boss is "the gift that keeps giving" to good bosses everywhere.
My wife caught COVID last month while I was out of town. Since I continued testing negative, we decided that I would stay at the farm until either I tested positive or she tested negative. I posted a message on Slack explaining where I was and why, just as a “why is Tony joining all meetings remote this week” kind of update.
Immediately, three of my previous reports reached out directly to let me know that they were more than happy to drop off anything she might need: groceries, medication, Dairy Queen, anything. That is the kind of relationship a manager/leader and their reports can have. We’ve never really done much outside of work socially. We do the odd team dinner to mark special occasions. Two of them have had car trouble and are handy but didn’t have the tools they needed; I had the tools (tubing bender for a brake line, electric impact for getting a stuck bolt out) and dropped those off on the weekend.
The big dance I have always tried to do is make us into a team that always has each other’s back. I’ve made it clear that sometimes The Business wants us to do weird things that don’t always make sense and we’ve gotta just do it, but in general I’m doing my best to shield them from nonsense and help make sure we’ve got an environment where everyone can do their best work.
I dunno, it was all an experiment and it seems to have worked out.
As long as one is the person with the authority in a relationship one cannot really know which option it is.
The other piece is that this team has done this kind of stuff in the past for each other. As an example, one guy blew a timing belt on the highway about 150km out of the city (on Sunday night coming back to town for work Monday morning). Two of the other people on the team loaded up tools into their truck and drove out to meet him, try to see if they could fix the car on the side of the road, and when they realized they couldn't they towed it away from the road and gave him a ride back to town.
I mean, I could be misreading this, but it seems like I, without really knowing what I was doing, put together a really tightly gelled team that jumps at the opportunity to help each other out. And in the process, I guess I got to be a part of that even after I left.
There are benefits to the latter approach ... I could futz around on my phone in particularly boring or useless meetings. But keeping the cameras on does make connections feel more personal and overall I prefer it, particularly for small meetings.
Plus, everyone gets to see my dogs roughhousing in the background.
The fact those meetings are occurring is a failure of the culture, and especially the move to WFH. It's been the key differentiator for me post-COVID; companies that are begrudgingly remote try to keep the office norms in place, just now remote, vs the companies embracing remote finding new workflows, which means leaning on async communication, collaborative documents, etc, instead of meetings, and synchronous meetings only when absolutely necessary.
And it's been eye opening; in those former cases, no one wanted "social" Zoom meetings, myself included. But in those latter, people asked about it, championed it happening, etc.
People only have so much time they want to be in meetings online, and making sure it's used to build team bonds, instead of squandered on business problems that could be solved other ways, seems like a huge part of making remote be successful.
A significant component of that is that my only work experience is in a fully remote team of varying time zones. I imagine that changes the perspective of how these things should go compared to someone who's used to the social interactions of the office.
On the professional world, where money and titles are put on the head of people, things hardly ever go that way, I believe for many reasons but mainly due to competitivity.
Regardless, really happy to hear your experience and story. I'd love to be at an actual team as you put it.
I think there's a fundamental divide between people. Some see the workplace and the people in it as an integral part of their life. Others see it as a place they spend 40 hours a week that enables them to live their actual life. Neither are wrong and I think a lot depends on the type of company you work for. For me personally there's nothing intimate or sanctified about my relationship with my boss.
But I do agree with your general point. Being someone's boss can have a large impact on their life. I'd reach for terms like responsible, ethical, or kind.
And once you have to do that it might be prudent to let it become a part of your identity. It is after all something that you have to do for half of your waking time outside of weekends and vacations.
People put on a polite friendly face at work, but that doesn’t mean they’re your intimate friends. Sometimes, but I think it’s not so common as you’re implying.