Why you should ensure staff have good things to say about you behind your back

A leader has many traits; being a good orator, having the ability to influence others to see into your vision and ideas, inspire and develop genuine relationships with your team.

It’s known that the more affable a leader is the more that the team wants to work with them. A study in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge found that, when given a choice of who to work with, people will pick one person over another according to two criteria - competence on the job and likeability.

In a separate article in Harvard Business Review, researchers Nathan T Washburn, Assistant Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Benjamin Galvin, Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University, found communication is fundamental to leaders. They found the most important communicative exchanges to be genuine anecdotes employees hear about their boss from a peer. 

The research into ‘leading from a distance’ (through what people say about leaders) shows that stories told informally by peers, dubbed ‘leader surrogates’ in the article, are more powerful in helping to inspire employees than formal communications.