Drawing the Line

At Managing Leadership, Jim Stroup provides sound advice on how supervisors can keep from evolving into personal counselors:

Your employees are grown men and women, and will – like you – periodically face confusion and difficulties in their personal lives which will affect their work, and will – like you – find ways to resolve and move beyond them. Your role is not to do that for them – and certainly not to presume that you understand the uniquely personal ways they perceive and approach such matters, or the particular needs and ambitions they have in their wider lives.

Rather, your role is to help them do the jobs you assign them better in the present, and to enhance their ability to contribute to the unit and the organization more effectively in the future. It is only to this extent, and from this perspective, that you want to explore who they are, discover what their capabilities are, and uncover what hopes and ambitions they entertain for their careers.

Don’t, in your role as a manager, presume you have a right or obligation to involve yourself in matters beyond that. And don’t assume you know the answers to those riddles – just keep your eyes open, your questions non-leading, and let them tell you. You’ll find that if you do that well enough, they’ll do all the transforming they need or want all on their own, to everyone’s satisfaction.