Good managers need to listen to employees’ problems and concerns
Being told to “leave that crap at home” can sometimes drag it right into the middle of a hog operation, a staff management specialist told the Manitoba Swine Seminar.
“If you want to build a relationship with your staff and keep your team motivated, you have to be a sympathetic leader,” said Eric Spell, president of AgCareers.com.
“If there are things within your staff that are dragging them down, keeping them unhappy, you can’t motivate them … until those things are addressed.”
Spell, a North Carolinian who has advised many Canadian agriculture companies, said hog barn managers have traditionally been unwilling to hear much about employees’ personal problems or challenges.
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That may make sense in many situations, but at times workers can become so distracted and unfocused by their personal life challenges that they become ineffective in the barn.
That’s when a good manager needs to listen and empathize with the situation rather than just say, “I’m not your counsellor, I’m not your daddy, I’m not the reason your kids aren’t doing well in school, I’m not the reason your wife is upset with you or leaving you.”
Good staff are hard to find, so they need to be managed well, Spell said. It’s a complex task, but barn operators need to remember the phrase that “people leave bosses, not jobs.”
