It’s Friday afternoon. You’re heading out of the office.
Do you stop by your manager’s office to say goodbye?
Or, do you slip out without a word?
I hope you do the former. That would suggest you have a good relationship with your manager.
Unfortunately, however, I’m afraid most people do the latter.
A lot of managers are jerks. I have seen more than one weekend ruined by an assignment given late on a Friday afternoon. If you got a manager like that, a Friday afternoon conversation could be hazardous.
But what if your manager is also a good servant-leader?
Then I bet you stop in to say goodbye for the weekend. Here are 3 things a servant-leader might say on Friday afternoon:
- “What did we accomplish this week?” By definition, servant-leaders are goal oriented. For them, results count. So, good servant-leaders want to keep abreast of their team’s shared progress. Servant-leaders want to know what their followers think is going well or is off track, as the case may be.*
- “Did we learn something new?” The best servant-leaders are continuous learners. They look for the opportunity to learn, through formal instruction, of course, but also through daily interaction with others. Servant-leaders are particularly good at learning from failure.**
- “Thank you.” Actually, servant-leaders don’t reserve their thanks for Friday afternoon. The ones I’ve known say “thank you” early and often. And they mean it. Good servant-leaders treat their followers – even those they manage – as if they were volunteers. They’re grateful for that followership.***
So, if you have a good manager, stop by and say goodbye on Friday afternoon. And if you want to be a good manager yourself, do the same.
What do you think of these 3 things to say on Friday afternoon? Are there other things you’ve heard a servant-leader say as the week comes to a close? What are we missing here?
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* See what you think of these posts:
* “Servant-leaders Play to Win”