If you own a small or mid-size business, and you want to be a good boss or leader to your team, there are a lot of things that you will need to be mindful of. Creating a positive office environment or workplace might not be something you immediately think of.

Of course, you have to ensure that everyone has the resources they need in order to do their jobs to the best of their ability. And, it will fundamentally be up to you to provide the driving force, and vision, that motivates everyone to put in their best effort, and to keep things moving forward.

Ultimately, you could have the best of intentions, but with the wrong philosopy, it can backfire.  Even with the most brilliant business vision, and an excellent product or service,  having the wrong office environment that is chaotic, toxic, and poorly run, can spell disaster.

Being a good boss has a lot to do with maintaining harmony and consistency within your company. So, here are some tips for running a harmonious office environment.

Image via Pixabay

 

Use the right tools to streamline things as much as possible

Using the right tools can make a tremendous difference in the ability of your employees to work consistently, and harmoniously, and avoid stepping on each other’s toes too much.

Using business management software such as SAP Business One allows you to use the same basic platform for your company as a whole, with different departments relying on different modules. This helps to keep things a lot more harmonious and centralized than they otherwise would be.

A quick search of SAP Business One cost might reveal that the service is perfect for your company. But, even if you’re just running a largely solo business from home, and are relying on a few freelancers to move things forward, tools like this are important.

If you are a smaller business you may consider using a digital kanban service such as Trello. This can work wonders for ensuring that no one is wasting time overwriting anyone else’s work, or wondering what to do.

Adopt a strong personal accountability ethos, and let that filter down to your employees

Various people, ranging from former US Navy SEALs to bestselling authors, have commented on the importance of personal accountability in business. This is especially true with regards to leadership.

When you adopt a strong personal accountability ethos in your business, you not only ensure that you’re not allowing yourself to subvert or disrupt the office environment, absentmindedly, but you also set a positive example to all your employees.

Leading by example is one of the best ways to get your team to perform in the way you hope them to. Be an inspiration to your organization and not just someone who barks orders.

When your employees see that you are the kind of boss who refuses to arbitrarily pass the blame, and who owns up to their own mistakes, and does the work that they expect of everyone else, that ethos will have a trickle-down effect and will influence office culture.

Generally speaking, the more that your office environment is dominated by a strong personal accountability ethos, the better things will run, and the more harmonious they will be.

Do what you can to ensure that everyone always knows what they should be doing, in clear detail

Confusion causes a lot of trouble in business, and if a significant portion of your employees don’t actually understand what they should be doing, in clear detail, at any given moment, tensions are bound to run high, inefficiency will rise, and things will simply go wrong. A confused mind does nothing, so be sure to make it clear what people in your organization should be doing. 

One great way of preventing this problem from arising is to favor simple approaches and explanations of initiatives, projects, and tasks.

The better able you are to clearly communicate what it is you want to be done, in as few complex terms as possible, the likelier things are to tick along smoothly in the office.

It may even be a good idea to bring expert consultants on board, to audit your business in order to ensure that clarity of communication and understanding are the norm, rather than the exception.

Structure the physical layout of the building to encourage peak productivity

You won’t necessarily be able to redesign your perfect office building out of your current one, in terms of its actual architectural elements.

But, when looking for an office in which to set up your business in the first place, or when considering how to partition and organize things in the office, you should try to structure things in such a way that they encourage peak productivity.

The academic and author Cal Newport has said quite a bit on that topic, in his hit book Deep Work. His suggestion is that there should be something like a common working area where people can exchange ideas, but that there should also be sectioned off “nodes” where individuals are able to retreat into solitude to really focus on their work without any distractions.

A setup like this may help to reduce tensions in the office pretty substantially, and apparently also boosts productivity. If you’d like to pick up a copy of his book to learn more, you can get it on Amazon HERE. 

Create an office environment that celebrates what you want to duplicate

As a leader or boss, it can be tough to avoid falling into negativity or criticism when things aren’t going according to plan. However, it’s important to create a positive office environment as it will be more motivating to your team and organization.

One way to create this positive work environment is to celebrate what you want to duplicate. Certainly, you may occasionally use negative reinforcement to get a point across to your team, but overall positive reinforcement can get the same results and develop loyalty.

No one likes working for a leader or boss who is the kind of person that only points out the negatives in what you are doing. We’ve all worked in organizations where the only time we hear from our superiors is when they feel we have done something wrong. It’s not a fun place to work.

So instead of doing that and unknowingly turning your organization around you, instead focus on recognizing the kind of activities and behavior you wish to see in your team. For example, maybe you want an increase in sales of your organization. Well, sales is a numbers game, so maybe you create a recognition of the salesperson who makes the most sales calls each week.

People will work for a living but die for recognition. Creating reward programs or even just recognizing those in your team doing the right things, can increase the overall activity in your organization. Most people don’t always outwardly say it, but lack of recognition is often a primary reason for people quitting a current job or leaving a company.

Create leaderboards for your organization to recognize the right activities 

If you want to reduce turnover and keep your quality employees and team members around longer, make an effort to recognize their efforts on a regular basis. It could be something as simple as putting up leader boards of your organization for various categories.

You wouldn’t even need to give out a prize or reward for being on the leaderboards. You certainly could, but for many people, just the satisfaction knowing they are performing at the top of the organization will be enough.

I know for me every time I hit the leaderboards in various businesses I am an affiliate for, it gives me a sense of pride knowing, out of thousands of other affiliates, I am one of the best. You can create that same kind of pride in your organization as well.

Obviously, you can also give out monetary rewards beyond recognition to those performing well in your organization. One thing to keep in mind though is that the rewards you give out should be in proportion to the revenue the activities bring into the company. You wouldn’t want to give out an all expense paid vacation to someone who made one sale unless of course, that sale brought in tens of thousands of dollars of revenue to the company.

Implement these tips in your company and your office environment will be thriving in no time!

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Mike MacDonald

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Email: [email protected]

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