I wrote the phrase “I am a people first manager” today while doing some free form writing, and I asked myself what this meant. I’m not sure if I’ve ever declared this before, so I wanted to explore that here with you today.
When I think about being people-first, I want to make sure I defend the business. Without the business, we don’t have jobs, and thus we don’t have a team, so the business is still important and necessary.
However, when I say people first, it does mean putting the business second. I think counter-intuitively though, this is what’s best for the business.
If you only care about short term gains, you can always sacrifice people to boost short term productivity. This does increase risk, particularly for bugs and crashes, but forcing people to work long hours and burn out can serve you in the short term. I think this is horrible and lazy, but we would be dishonest to deny short term gains.
It will however always cost you in the long term. Always.
Investing in people and supporting their well-being is the only viable long term strategy. If you take care of your people, they will take care of you.
I can hear the skeptics and the pessimists screaming, and perhaps sometimes they are correct, but outliers aside I believe if you support your people with everything you have, it will always come back in higher returns for you and for them.
As a concrete example, I have had engineers on my team tell me they are interviewing elsewhere. They risked potential backlash from their manager by telling me this, but they chose to trust me. And in doing so, I was able to help them vet companies based on their career goals, help make space for them to interview (instead of them randomly taking time off) which was less awkward for them, and have someone to talk to about the job hunt.
In some cases, this helped them realize they want to stay and they are still with me, and in other cases we found them their next opportunity and we said our good bye on good terms.
Without this information early, I may find out when they have accepted an offer elsewhere, and I am unable to help them. That’s a choice they get to make, but by building trust I hope they can take the risk with me, because I am here to support them even if that means walking them out the door (and the business is sad about it).
This is a more extreme example of where I put people first. Perhaps I could have kept them longer and squeezed some productivity out of them by sabotaging their job hunt, or filling their head with pessimism about changing companies. I certainly wanted them to stay, so shouldn’t I use my influence to keep them?
I think you can try, and most managers do, but I don’t think it’s serving either of you, and is one of the biggest reasons management is a dirty word in some peoples mouths. People are not resources.
Your people need to feel supported by you. That they can trust you, and that they know you have their back, no matter what. In that world, you are going to get their best work out of them. You are going to have a strong relationship you both can lean on during hard times.
I have walked my team through tremendous challenges, both privately and as a team, and having that trust made the unexpected way more manageable for all of us.
So not only do I believe that being a people-first leader is the most productive way to lead, I think it’s the most kind way to lead.
Your people are giving up their time to work for this company. They don’t ever get that time back. In the reality where we need to trade time-for money, we could all use kindness. We could all use a leader who supports us in the best way they can.
Let me know what you think about people-first leadership! I love to be wrong, it’s the best way to learn.