Do you check in on new employees? Do you ask them how they’re doing, what they might need, how you can help them, how things are going in general? Not once, not just on their first day, but multiple times, throughout their first weeks?
You should.
A semi-new colleague told me today that he’d never experienced that until this job, and that it made him willing to come to me about things he wouldn’t have raised otherwise, and that it made him believe that we actually cared and weren’t just giving lip service to it. Because I am a huge geek about such things, this made my day.
Really, go down the hall to that new guy’s office right now and ask him how things are going.
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Great post. What many bosses don’t get is that the most powerful tool in their arsenal is attention. I tell new supervisors that THE key success-making behavior is “touch base a lot.” It’s powerfully important with new team members because they’re a bit uncomfortable. To be a successful leader you need to build relationships with your team members, checking in is the first step.