5 Subtle Ways To Be A Boss Your Employees Respect, According To Psychology
What two decades in the world of leadership has taught me about what makes a leader great.
fizkes | Canva What exactly is a brilliant boss? Well, they’re easy to spot. They’re swan-like, decisive, strong-willed, yet flexible leaders who treat people like humans and lead with passion to get things done. They’re always at the heart of the action, solving problems and moving things forward. They’re normally doing it with a smile on their face, too. And they matter more than we might realize.
One study referenced by PR Newswire found 57% of people left their job because of a bad boss, with a LinkedIn survey finding 7 in 10 US employees would quit because of one. It’s estimated poor leadership cost businesses $223 billion in turnover costs in the period from 2014–2019 alone, according to an article by the Society for Human Resource Management.
But more than all of this, without brilliant bosses, there’s nobody for younger employees to look up to. So many potential leaders get put off taking promotions because they don’t want to be like their bad boss, while those who do step up struggle due to a lack of guidance or poor examples to follow.
Here are 5 subtle ways to be a boss your employees respect, according to psychology:
1. Be a swan
Like a swan looking graceful above the surface, there will be legs furiously paddling under the waterline. Bosses have to work hard to make things seem so calm, cool, and collected. Even if you don’t feel it, presenting this image goes a long way toward making people feel safe and secure under your leadership.
There‘s definite value in sharing your struggles — don’t be a robot! But when the doo-doo hits the air-spinning machine, you want to be there looking cool, calm, and in control.
Core principles that have helped me over the years:
- Work on your stress management and mindfulness — Exercise, breathing practices, yoga, meditation; pick your poison and keep it regular so you’ve got the tools there when you need them.
- Regulate your reactions — Don’t be a slave to your emotions. Take a beat before you reply or respond. Sometimes all it takes is a deep breath.
- Remember the long game —Everything is temporary, even a crisis. Keep looking ahead and focus on moving forward because motion is the lotion. This, too, shall pass.
- Reframe your experiences — Bad days are good experiences. Discomfort builds character. And you never know what worse luck your bad luck saved you from.
- Reflect, learn, apply — Every setback offers a lesson. Sift through the damage and find it, digest it, and apply it. Then move on!
And I’ve found that by focusing on the responsibilities outside of yourself, there’s less time to get anxious or worry. So when things get a little hairy, your busyness will leave you looking cooler than a polar bear in a cold plunge. Even if inside you’re spinning out, channel that fizzy anxiety into something productive and cook two meals with one pan.
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2. Build relationships built on trust
I got my first promotion when I was eighteen, becoming the head chef of a pizza kitchen. My former colleagues were now looking to me for answers. Recognizing I didn’t have a lot of experience, I chose to focus on two things to be an effective leader: my example and my support. The example part was easy. I’d work hard, set high standards, do the hard shifts, and try to make everything look easy.
For support, I put all my energy into making it as easy as possible for the staff to ‘win.’ I considered all the pain points I had as an employee and went about solving these for them. For example, it was always a pain to weigh ingredients mid-shift. So staff would eyeball everything — either massively undercutting the customer or using too much and blowing the profit margins and stock.
The previous manager tried being stricter and threatening to dock money from wages — this did not work. I rewrote the ‘cheat sheets’ that listed the recipes and split amounts of ingredients into three categories, defined by a different-sized handful. These handfuls corresponded with circles drawn around the small kitchen. So now, when staff eyeballed, they had a visual reference.
This wasn’t a perfect system, but it was the beginning of something I’d tweak over the coming months, with help from staff, until we got to a point where they had an easily implementable system that got us close to spec. Not that I knew it then, but this is an example of being a servant leader, defined by Harvard Law's Program of Negotiation as someone who puts the needs of your employees before yours or your organization’s.
So, think about things from their perspective. And rather than issuing directives that feel draconian, think about how your same instructions could be framed as advice to help make their life easier or their job smoother. Respect their effort by removing obstacles, then watch engagement and motivation thrive.
3. Make people feel seen
Doesn’t it feel great when people notice your hard work? Anyone can turn up and churn through some basic tasks. But if your boss makes you feel like you’re important — that you matter — you’re going to dig that little bit deeper when times are tough.
My old mentor told me something that’s always stuck with me: “Treat everyone with respect and dignity, and as if they matter, even if they don’t do the same for you.”
Does someone make a stupid mistake? Don’t rub it in. Help them fix it and remind them anyone can make these mistakes. In a disagreement, wherever possible, leave people a way to gracefully dismount from a position (rather than backing them into a corner). Be friendly. Ask questions (and remember what you’re told). Get to know people. Ask for advice and input, even if you think it won’t help (because it might anyway).
And take the time to loop people in, even if they aren’t directly involved. If you’re not sure, ask yourself what you wish people would notice you do. Now try to find that in someone else, then recognize and praise it. Be the boss you wish you’d had.
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4. Be decisive
Everyone has struggled with deciding some point in their life. But talent means nothing if you don’t use it. Making good decisions isn’t always possible. Sometimes, you need to make the best bad choice using incomplete data. This discomfort is a feature, not a bug. The better you can be at this, the more effective you’ll become.
One thing I’ve learned to draw confidence from over the years is that most decisions result in one of two outcomes: you either win (get what you want) or learn (know how to do it better next time). This is part of how you sharpen the pencil of your intuition.
Bad decisions can usually be fixed. And most of the things I’m good at now have their nucleus in some horrible bad decision or missed opportunity from my past.
Years ago, I faced a choice between taking a promotion in my current job or moving to a start-up with a friend. The promotion was more money and great for the CV, but the start-up was more like the kind of job I wanted to do.
Unsure, I erred. For ages. Then, I ended up taking the promotion out of convenience and stability. My friend who joined the start-up, despite no experience, worked his way up to executive within two years and is now on a great salary doing exactly the kind of job I’d love to do.
Did I make the right call? Who knows. But I don’t regret it. After all, it’s trial and error, not trial and excellence. You’re defined not by what happens but by how you respond.
A little approach that’s helped me, and that I’ve shared with clients and employees alike is to use the 3 Rs:
- Reframe the decision — Rather than feel burdened by choice, embrace the privilege of it. Remember how much you’d want to have the chance to impact things if you didn’t have it. And remember, very little is life and death. Most things are fixable, to a degree. And you can learn from a wrong decision, but you often learn nothing from doing nothing.
- Revisit your values — When there’s no obvious ‘right’ decision, it’s down to you to consult your internal compass. How does the decision align with your values?
- Reduce potential damage — When we’re not 100% sure we made the right call, we can still work on things around the decision to help or to avoid negative consequences. Look ahead and see what you can offset.
But at the end of the day, accept you won’t always be right and that’s part of this game. Leadership is as much about being OK with being wrong sometimes as it is about always being right.
As my old boss used to say, ‘Don’t waste a good mistake.’ When you do get it wrong, accept that this is the tax you pay to get better. It’s the entry fee to your brighter future, where you’re wiser, battle-hardened, and better prepared.
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5. Get the right things done
I used to work with a manager who thought, mistakenly, that his job was only about planning and that execution was the team’s job. He’d set lofty projects based on some goals he’d discuss with his boss, then put it on our plate and expect us all to just figure it out.
Sometimes, he’d dip into a project to pick up some rudimentary or simple bit of work, then remind us all how hard he was working. Then he’d complain that we weren’t getting results despite his help, so it was on all of us to improve.
In hindsight, I’ve realized he fell for the busywork fallacy, according to the Harvard Business Review. He’d grasp at work that felt productive but that didn’t get anything done.
He was so focused on completing these project overviews, plans, and goal-setting that he didn’t do any of the work — or figure out how to help others do it either. He’d convince himself he was busy because he was just on the wrong stuff.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for planning. Of course, there is. But we can often get caught up in what GoogleX director Astro Teller calls ‘juggling monkeys v pedestals,’ referenced by an article by Annie Duke. This is the idea that we spend ages building pedestals, which feel like progress, but forget to train the monkey to juggle.
If you aren’t getting the difficult bits done, you will default to the easy wins to give yourself the illusion of progress. Then, when you get to training the monkey and realize it’s impossible, you’ve wasted time and resources on something you can’t even use.
Some leaders never bother with projects that require training monkeys because they want easy, safe wins. Then they wonder why engagement is down and why staff lacks inspiration.
This is where it’s important and powerful to go to your team. Canvass them for input and innovative solutions. Seek the creatives, the neurodiverse, the abstract thinkers, and see how they, as individuals and you all as a team, can rise to these new challenges.
Even if you fail, you grow. You bond. You learn about each other’s strengths and weaknesses. People get a chance to shine because of their differences. Quirks and contrarianism become superpowers.
And perhaps most importantly, you see yourselves as people who respond to challenges with proactivity, open minds, and energy. So bias for useful action. Put moving the needle as the daily goal. And whatever you do, don’t chase easy wins.
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You can’t always guarantee you’re going to be capable. But you can always try to be willing. Brilliant bosses are those who build resilience through running towards problems, rather than away from them. They’re the people we almost instantly admire, won over by their commitment to results and their passion for all they do.
They get the best out of people and build a strong spine of loyalty and cohesion into any team they’re a part of by setting a great example and treating their staff like humans, not workhorses. The best thing is anyone can become one through practice and experience.
Tobias C. Shaw is a writer, leadership coach, and corporate executive. His articles are in Medium and Business Insider, and he has been working in leadership for two decades.