People are the most important asset

As a Human Resource Major I believe that people are the most important asset in any business.  I worked as a manager for a large retailer for 12 years and I always made sure my employees felt I cared.  I tried to honor all time off requests, knew their birthdays, knew about their families (only what they shared) and always, always tried to be fair.  Now, I was by far not a perfect leader and if I had to do it all over again there are things I would do differently but knowing my employees and caring about them would not change.

Which brings me to the reason for this post.  In the past few years I've been a part of two separate businesses, both wonderful companies, who want their leaders to "build relationships" with their employees/team/customers.  The problem is, the leaders have either only chosen to build their relationships with the people they choose, alienating a good portion of their employees/team/customers or they go as far as to ask the questions showing interest, but leave it at a question not showing interest in the answer.

Here is an example of each situation.  If you have a team of five people and you take one of them to lunch you have to be prepared to take ALL five of them to lunch (not necessarily at the same time), if you pick up coffee for one, you do it for all. Treating each of them the same will show you care about all of them and respect and are grateful for the work they do for you no matter how big or small their role is.  Showing favoritism never ever works and it can create a bitter climate within your business.

If you ask an employee a question regarding their family, personal life, etc you have to be prepared to care about the answer.  I you say "how is son/daughter" and you get a response, ask a follow up, acknowledge the answer!  DO NOT ignore it completely and respond with something to do with business.  In doing the latter you show that you don't really care about the person, you only care about what they can do for you in business.

You need to know your people.  They will work better for you if they can see you are human and have compassion.  Obviously, there is a fine line, because you still have to discipline your team if they are out of line, but when you set clear goals with clear consequences and they know what to expect, the rest should fall into place.

Side note: My first real management job I had 5 employees 3 of the 5 became managers themselves and 4 are either currently pursuing or have already completed college degrees.