A good director is not just a manager, but a leader who inspires subordinates to work with maximum commitment. In order to build relationship with the staff correctly, CEO should control emotions and behavior, and do not allow unhealthy ambitions to develop. Thus, right after the promotion the director should make a list of his employees; remember their names; learn their duties and understand what they factually do (just duty regulations, more or less than that, or something completely different with duty regulations); understand the mood dominating in the office; learn the statistics of absenteeism, sick certificates, and complaints; build effective relations and communication with subordinates.
On the other hand, the newly appointed CEO should not discuss the previous director publicly and especially behind the scenes; shift the responsibility for mistakes to a predecessor and explain the poor performance of the company through his bad management; discuss subordinates with strangers; emphasize own importance in front of the staff; overdose with authoritarian methods; or surround himself with favorites.
In order to understand what the new position of a CEO means, one should imagine that his hands are cut and he can no more do something with his own hands. But instead of hands, he obtains several assistants, who will fulfill instructions and requests. The task is to perform the work using only assistants’ potential. In the process of leadership, the director can periodically feel the desire to regain his hands, because he could do the job better than his subordinates. But he needs to learn to suppress this desire. Therefore, a CEO should strive for ensuring that the potential of his employees is rising and that understanding and interaction between them is enhancing. Only in this way, a director can do the work, the scale of which exceeds the capability of one person.
Managing employees can be implemented in different ways: a director can be an authoritarian leader, motivating employees through the fear of punishment and establishing orders as indisputable ones; or he can be a democratic leader, building relationships with employees on the basis of trust and respect and trying to motivate and inspire in formulation of the problem. There is no general rule, everything depends on the situation. However, there are some basic rules for managing personnel:
A director should become kinder, because employees need to feel kindness and care in his every word or action. The ideal situation is when subordinates are beginning to perceive their working group as a second family, and the director is treated as father or mother. At the same time, the chief executive should not try to show that he knows everything. Being a manager means that one cannot know everything and should not, by definition. As a leader, A CEO can no longer behave as a specialist, while his task is to trust the knowledge and skills of specialists, each in his own field (Bach 56-64).
The chief executive should give employees the right to make mistakes. Stopping to control every step of the staff, the manager teaches them to be accountable for their work. Perhaps, in some cases, a CEO could do the job better, than employees, but there are no CEOs, who want to obtain inert employees, having no personal opinion, refusing to develop and improve their knowledge. Thus, it is normal to give some freedom and accept the fact that subordinates make mistakes (Bach 75-78).
In this connection, the director should work only with those who can be trusted. If he gives an employee the right to make mistakes, then he should trust him as a specialist. Otherwise, it will be impossible to work for a common goal. If an employee made a mistake, it shouldn’t be left unattended. The task of director is to instruct an employee, send to trainings, conduct certification, but then again trust him. If after all this, there is no trust, then an employee should be replaced by those who can be trusted (Tappin 133-141).
A leader should establish his authoritativeness. There are many points of view concerning personal relationship at work. However, if a CEO becomes friends with a subordinate, he must be a leader in these relations. If he yields the role of leader and start looking for subordinate’s approval, he dies as a leader for this subordinate. If a person feels he cannot be a leader in relations with subordinates, it is better to keep certain distance.
However, the director should mark like-minded persons, i.e. the staff supporting the same values. If the director believes that the quality of work is above all, he shouldn’t hire people oriented at customer satisfaction, etc. This won’t contribute to the effectiveness of the company, unlike conducting corporate holidays and parties, aimed at communication and propaganda of corporate spirit. A far-seeing leader uses this tool for managing the staff in the moments, when the staff showed either its good or bad side. This helps cut sharp corners in communicating with staff and solve a lot of problems inside the company (Tappin 123-34).
From the external side, market puts the organization in fundamentally new relations with government organizations; new economic and legal regulators are established. In connection with this, business relationship between the heads of organizations, between managers and subordinates, among all employees within the organization are changing. The professional role of any employee is intrinsically linked to the implementation of ethical norms, rules of conduct and relationship with his external environment. Compliance with the ethics of business relations is one of the main criteria for the assessment of professionalism of both individual employee and organization as a whole (Whitehouse 299 – 318).
Setting the rules of conduct of business entities at the level of laws and regulations adopted by relevant bodies within their competence, the state monitors compliance with these regulations through various supervisory bodies. Companies and their top-management are to be aware of competences of those bodies, of their rights and responsibilities, as well as their rights and obligations in relations with these bodies.
The management of companies should know that law determines not only the competence of these bodies, but also the procedure for monitoring activities; not only their rights, but also responsibilities for inspections, conditions and procedure of their responsibility for illegal actions, causing harm to the company. At the same time, law regulates in detail responsibilities and rights of inspected, conditions and procedures of company’s responsibility not only for direct violation of the law, but also for non-legitimate claims of supervisory bodies. On the basis of legislation acts, a company cannot only secure annulment of illegal decisions, but also compensation for company’s damages (Zhi 245-59).
It should also be emphasized that the basic guarantee of company’s safety in dealing with regulatory authorities is knowledge and clear compliance with the requirements of legislation. Nevertheless, in some cases, controversial situations arise, because of inadequate legislation or its contradictions. In such cases, a CEO will need professional help. However, using the experience of professionals (lawyers, accountants, and economists) is more effective at a preliminary stage, than later, when the company has been penalized. A CEO should bear in mind that some supervisory authorities, for example, tax inspections, conduct special counseling, so the company can get free advice on tax issues, etc. (Zhi 245-59).
In general, each company has its natural growth rate. If it is not reached, the business can slow down. If the company moves too fast, it can also cause the collapse. The CEO’s task lies in regulating this rate: strenuously develop during the period of stagnation; and restrain the desire to increase investment, when volumes of sales increase dramatically, never acting without careful forecasting. If the business is growing too quickly, employees do not keep pace with it, experiencing overload and stress, losing their ability to learn, which actually brings the crisis. Thus, the strategy of the company and of its top-management should be clear to all employees without exception; this gives stability and effectiveness.