Truth 14. You don’t have to be perfect

The old saw goes like this: If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. The other saw goes like this: If you don’t screw up now and then, you’re not learning. So, collapse the two, and this is what you get: Screw up, learn, grow. Repeat.

That’s a mighty big saw to swallow when you’re the manager. Aren’t you supposed to be a role model? Yes. You’re supposed to be the role model of learning from your mistake and then growing from it.

If you’re managing people in a company that’s serious about cultivating an engaged workplace, you’re going to be expected to develop your own ways of keeping your employees passionate and excited about the work they do. And you’re going to make a mistake now and then. The engagement-specific blunders that you’ll make won’t be technical; they’ll be behavioral. Those mistakes are harder to measure. (You always know if you made deadline or plan, but are you really sure you didn’t just hurt your assistant’s feelings?)

This should make you feel better: Top leaders who are sincerely committed to creating engaged workplace cultures are also sincerely interested in your engagement. And they know that it’s a never-ending learning process up and down org chart. People don’t expect you to be perfect; they just want you to learn from the last time that you weren’t. You build your power as a leader with your ability to say “I’m sorry.”

Some companies that conduct annual engagement surveys offer their managers post-survey coaching and suggested action plans to improve those weaknesses that alienate their employees. Some even require you to post your new resolutions online so the entire company knows your plan. You know that dream where you suddenly discover that you’re naked? It’s sort of like that.

Maybe your company doesn’t even have an engagement survey process. You can still work on your people skills. Your task is to be clear yourself on what your issues are and then make it clear to your employees that you “get it” and are working on them.

Hold a departmental meeting to go over your employees’ issues as a group. Make the meeting as congenial as possible, putting yourself in the hot seat and reassuring your employees that you’re there to learn from them.

Make their comfort with the process paramount. That way you’ll get honest feedback. Never, for instance, make a single employee feel busted for making a complaint. If you want to see a resignation letter really fast, begin your meeting with, “Aw, c’mon, let’s get real here. I know it was you who....” That, by the way, could also generate a termination letter. Yours. Just wait a day or two.

Let everyone in your group know that you sincerely want to improve the way you do your job and that you welcome everyone’s thoughts. Set this up as, in effect, a reverse performance appraisal meeting, in which your direct reports can discuss your performance and then provide a clear picture of how you can improve the way you do your job.

Calmly ask questions that will help both you and your employees understand their own feelings about the issue. Before they’ve had this chance to talk it out—that is, not behind your back—the issues may have gotten so emotionalized that your employees forgot exactly what started bothering them in the first place.

Conclude the meeting with some agreements on changes you can make—preferably a few that you can measure. If one of the complaints is, for instance, “You never let us know what’s going on,” accept the objection evenly (forcing yourself to swallow any “yeah, buts” that are screaming to be let out of your mouth), and own the responsibility of keeping them more informed. Then together decide on a plan on what you can reasonably do to keep them in the loop. Perhaps you and your team can agree on a Monday morning weekly kickoff meeting. Or maybe they’ll be happy with a weekly e-mail.

The main point of these meetings is to let your employees know that your number-one role as their manager is to help them do their jobs better. The more you give yourself permission to be imperfect, the more these meetings will conclude with everyone thinking the same thing: “Phew! That was easy.”