I have had the privilege of working with thousands of talented frontline managers in leadership training.  While helping to develop their leadership skills I’ve noticed over time, there are two common mistakes that frontline leaders seem to repeat time and time again.

1.      Giving too much negative feedback.

Perhaps a better way to put it is to say frontline leaders often have the balance of their feedback too heavily weighed to corrective feedback.  Generally frontline managers provide far more corrective comments than positive.

Imagine you are on the receiving end of this.  Put yourself in your employee’s shoes. While your frontline manager is trying to be helpful, instead they are dragging you down with what just feels like nit-picking negativity.  You hardly ever hear you’re doing something right.  Because of this your openness to change starts to shut down.  You start to become more defensive and more anxious in the presence of your manager, and your motivation and work starts to suffer. Pretty soon you’re doing enough to get by, rather than being highly productive.

As a frontline leader, what should you do? 

Switch that ratio around.  Get out on the floor and give positive feedback there and then about what your employees are doing right, and the impact that it has.  This feedback needs to be detailed and accurate. 

Focus on having approximately four or more positive comments to every corrective comment you make to your team.

2.      Failing to give appropriate direction

Many frontline leaders underestimate the importance of giving the big picture.  Employees at all levels need to have an understanding of how their role, no matter how small, is contributing to the overall goal.

When you understand how your role fits into the big picture then you can look at the smaller goals.  What are your employees KPIs, how do these fit into the big picture?  Be open with them and communicate why these KPIs are important.  How do they help the overall organisation, or your business unit, reach it’s over all goals?

Both of these mistakes revolve around communication, and failing to communicate in the right way.  As a frontline leader you need to continuously work on your own leadership development.  This includes your self awareness and how what you communicate impacts on the people you lead.  The conversations that you choose to hold every day hold the key to employee motivation causing your people to be highly productive, or not.

Choose to be effective by ensuring you consistently provide direction and changing the balance of feedback to the positive.