Good leaders can judge how close they should be to their staff

There are leaders who dominate and direct, and those who foster positive relationships so teams offer themselves freely.

He didn’t want to but a friend of mine recently had to move office.

He found himself in a situation where he was personally too close to the people he was managing. He felt uneasy having to manage, effectively, his friends.

But he knew that if he was going to do his job properly he had to bite the bullet. He was in a situation where he wasn’t able to get his team to perform like others could.

So he moved to another floor.

This small pivot gave him the leverage he needed at work to make harder calls, free from emotional entanglements.

Leadership requires this sort of consistent growth and self-insight.

Jon Maner is a psychology professor at Florida State University. He says there are two differing leadership styles.

There are leaders who dominate and direct, and those who foster positive relationships so teams offer themselves freely.

It isn’t that one is better than the other; each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ve seen leaders thrive and fail in both. It becomes important to pick what is required at that time.

My friend had sought the emotional connection but it was coming up short.

Being friends with your colleagues and staff doesn’t always work. More dominant leaders tend to make faster decisions and can unite their team behind a unified vision.

On the other hand, some leaders build deep relationships and create communal decision-making.

The truth is that we all want to be liked but sometimes the situation calls for everyone to fall in line behind one person.

It can be hard to do that if we are too close to the people we are managing, emotionally or physically.

Good leaders find a way to pivot between the two. Maner makes the case that learning from both approaches is important, as neither works well 100 per cent of the time.

Horacio Falcao, a professor of decision sciences at business school Insead, warns against being too heavy-handed in negotiations. His research shows that going too hard and trying to prove you are strong can have unintended consequences, like people pretending to work harder than they are.

All of this falls into the complexities of emotional intelligence. It comes down to how we manage the situation in front of us. Sometimes we need to be distant and cold, while other times call for a more sensitive approach.

Employers are increasingly prioritising candidates who demonstrate their emotional intelligence. They realise that there is great value in having someone who can read the room, understand their team at a deeper level and respond accordingly.

It’s unfortunate but there is no one-size-fits-all style that fits. Like my friend found, being too close with your staff can be a weakness. Sometimes you have to make the hard calls that nobody else wants to.

Conrad Liveris is a corporate adviser on workplaces and risk.