Gaining The Respect Of Your Employees

It is easy to look at everything on paper when you are running a business - determining all the things you need to do in order to achieve success in this theoretical sense - but one thing this approach can lead to is a sort of nearsightedness that causes the business itself to fail (even though everything "on paper" looks right), and one of the main reasons that this can end up being the case is because looking at things on paper can cause you to forget about the people involved; if you want to achieve success with your business, it will be absolutely vital that you understand how to first gain the respect of your employees.

One mistake a lot of small business owners make is that they want to be friends with their employees, imagining that if they joke around with them and are friendly with them, these employees will work hard out of a relative sense of duty, but this rarely ends up being a successful approach; if you want your employees to respect you, you will need to start out by establishing authority, even when this is difficult to do.

After you have begun to establish authority - setting yourself up as the "boss," and making it clear that work comes first - you can move onto the next step of being friendly with your employees, even being willing to joke around and have fun with them; at the same time, however, you will need to realize that there is a certain point of "true friendship" that you may never be able to achieve with your employees, as you will need to keep a certain measure of space between them and you in order to maintain a sense of "respect."

And of course, you will want to observe the proverbial "golden rule" of 'doing unto others as you would have them do unto you'; treat your employees with respect at all times - never viewing them as a means to an end, but rather, viewing them (and treating them) as valuable assets - and they will return this attitude to you.

There is plenty more that goes into the success of a business than just what is seen on paper - and when you learn to gain the respect of your employees, you will be one step nearer to this success.