Working Mother

This post was written by Shari Storm, author of Motherhood is the New MBA: Using Your Parenting Skills to be a Better Boss.

This economy is throwing new challenges and new surprises at us almost daily. Our companies will have a better change at weathering this storm if we minimize unnecessary inter-office bickering, maintain a tone of control and reduce stress-causing behavior.

Here are three tips for being a better manager, plucked straight from the pages of a parenting handbook.

1. Create a sense of family:

Have you ever noticed how a parent scolds a child when they are fighting with their siblings?

“Don’t hit your sister!” or “Don’t tease your brother.”

Parents use family position instead of given names when barking these commands. Why? I think the stronger message is, “We are a family and that is not how you treat your family.”

Throughout the ages, healthy families that stick together have a better chance of survival for the individuals in the family. Good parents understand this, if even on an instinctual level, and shape their words to instill the message, “Be good to your family.”

As a manager, it’s tempting to create empires. Nothing bonds a team quicker than an “us against them” mentality. Whether it’s back office against frontline, marketing against finance, or employees against management, it’s easy to build small tribes within a bigger organization. It’s easy, but it’s not always best for your credit union.

Just like fighting with your siblings is bad for the family, interdepartmental bickering is bad for your company. It is particularly dangerous for us right now. Squabbling is time consuming, resource draining and morale dampening. If we are going to survive this economy we have to do a lot of things well and one of them, simple as it may sound, is get along.

2. Keep Up Your Game Face:

Parents understand how strongly their emotions set the tone for their children. One mother I interviewed for my book described the emotional ups and downs of her teenage daughter. “I just tell myself that it is my responsibility to stay off the emotional rollercoaster. I need to keep my feet firmly on the ground for her sake.”

So many people I have talked to on my book tour lament how crazy their jobs have gotten. One man said to me, “My boss is under so much stress and she is taking it out on all of us. It makes everything that much harder.”

One of the women I interviewed for my book, Jill Vicente of Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union in Seattle, had this to say, “I look to my boss to be the emotional constant and I try to do the same with my employees. I need to stay grounded and show them how a leader acts in stressful situations.”

It’s more important than ever before to avoid the emotional rollercoaster. As managers, we need to be direct and clear with our employees on our expectations, however, we also need to steer clear of interpersonal meltdowns. They only harm moral and create chaos.

3. Hold the Line on Tantrums:

Bosses aren’t the only ones losing their cool under pressure – so are employees. As salaries are frozen or reduced, perks diminished and teams grow leaner, employees are prone to showing their frustrations through disruptive and counterproductive behavior.

If you have an employee who is throwing an adult size tantrum, deal with it immediately.

Suzie Kellett, who has worked for People and Time Magazine as well as running film offices in Chicago and Washington, sums it up nicely, “When my quadruplets were growing up, I never let them make a fuss in public places. In the film business, I held production teams to the same expectations. If someone was acting up, I would take them aside and tell them, ‘Settle down. This behavior is not acceptable.’ “

Never underestimate what a quick ‘can I see you in the hall?’ can do when an employee is being sarcastic and acting improperly in a meeting. The combination of a change of scenery plus stern words can act as quickly on an employee as it does on your kids.

There are always going to be office politics, stressful outbursts and uncooperative employees, however, it is your duty as a manager to expertly guide your staff through these landmines, particularly when times are tough.

Shari Storm is a VP and CMO for Verity Credit Union in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Motherhood is the New MBA: Using Your Parenting Skills to be a Better Boss. To find out more about Shari Storm, visit her website.

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1. Using Your Parenting Skills to Be a Better Boss