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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the captain-obvious dept.

When managers create a culture where employees know the boss puts employees' needs over his or her own, measureable [sic] improvements in customer satisfaction, higher job performance by employees, and lower turnover are the result, according to research by Robert Liden, Sandy Wayne, Chenwei Liao, and Jeremy Meuser, that has just been published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Employees feel the most valued, and in return give back to the company and its customers when their bosses create a culture of trust, caring, cooperation, fairness and empathy. According to Sandy Wayne one of the authors of the research, "The best business leadership style is far from, 'Do this. Don't do that.' A servant leader looks and sounds a lot more like, 'Is there anything I can do to help you?' Or, 'Let me help you....' Or, 'What do you need to...?' This approach helps employees reach their full potential."

The study was conducted at the Jason's Deli national restaurant chain, and the sample included:
961 employees
71 Jason's Deli restaurants
10 metropolitan areas.
The findings were based on data from surveys completed by managers, employees, and customers, and data from corporate records.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/ub-wb042915.php

[Study]: http://amj.aom.org/content/57/5/1434

[Also Covered By]: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-bosses-employees.html

[Source]: http://business.uic.edu/docs/default-source/chrm-documents/2015-website-servant-leadership-and-serving-culture-linden-wayne-liao-meuser.pdf?sfvrsn=2 [PDF]

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:15AM

    by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:15AM (#179730) Journal

    When I was at Chevron, my boss' had a MBWA [allacronyms.com] style.

    He did not want to disrupt us from doing what we had to do. So he would drop by occasionally, several times a day, with a "how's it going?" - and that's about it.

    If we had anything that was hindering us, we would speak up, and he would escalate anything to whatever level it needed to go to get it solved. He would use his authority to buy us what we needed, or get whatever permissions or outside help we might need.

    We did not need to keep time sheets and other useless paperwork... he justified all of us to upper management. He wanted to make sure he did not stay hung-up on anything very long. Hung-up hours are wasted hours - and he did everything in his power to see to it time spent that way was minimized.

    He always had everything in order as to what needed to be done... then we did it in the order he prioritized, until hangups. Then we would shelve that one for a while until some thorn could be removed and work on something else.

    He had been where we were. He seemed to know everything about how that refinery ran. A human google, so to say. He was also the one who used to emphasize that when we did something, do it right. Failed work usually resulted in very expensive repairs. He had been there, done that, and warned us about things of his that had gone sour. He was human, too, and we could be quite frank about problems we ran up against. Interestingly enough, most of the problems were political, not physical.

    Being what we did was very important, but how we did it meant little, we were given wide latitude as to which methods and tools we used. Which meant we spent our time doing the work at hand, not constantly fixing stuff because we did not know what we were doing.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:41AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:41AM (#179736)

    So he would drop by occasionally, several times a day, with a "how's it going?"

    As long as that doesn't turn into a pattern of speech that starts off "Hey Peter, what's happening?"

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:11AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:11AM (#179789) Journal

      As long as that doesn't turn into a pattern of speech that starts off "Hey Peter, what's happening?"

      "And, umm, about those TPS reports . . . .. "

      I am in awe over how a single cinematic production could have captured the essence of modern existence, in so many ways, from smashing a printer to Jennier Aniston. Never to be repeated. If I had a boss, I would make sure that he knew where my stapler was.

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 07 2015, @06:18PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday May 07 2015, @06:18PM (#180011) Journal

    Good lord, that would drive me insane. Anyone who does coding or other complex tasks like that realizes it takes a bit of time to get the brain up to speed for any given task. If you interrupt me you lose that time and I have to start over.

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday May 08 2015, @03:53AM

      by anubi (2828) on Friday May 08 2015, @03:53AM (#180181) Journal

      I was not coding back then. I do some coding now for my Arduino compatible stuff and I know exactly what you refer to. One ill-timed phone call often derails hours of consideration of how something is to work.

      Most of the time, it was refinery maintenance. Something wasn't working right, and the plant operator asked us to look into it.

      So, we got our assortment of problems like damaged thermocouples, sticking valves, short circuits in sensing loops.

      Occasionally we upgraded instrumentation or designed custom interfaces to what we had in the field.

      Often several of us ran in parallel doing it. We worked quite well together. We had a team environment I have yet to see any other work environment recreate. A really good manager is very rare. Anyone can issue ultimatums. Very few can lead.

      I have yet to see this taught by seminar, rather in every instance I have seen, it was learned, tools in hand.

      What I saw taught in seminars is how to be a royal asshole and have your flock fearful of your assessments. It just made way for unpleasant work.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]