Small Talk Is an Overrated Way to Build Relationships with Your Employees (Unabridged‪)‬

The relationships that you form with each of your direct reports are central to your ability to fulfill your three core responsibilities as a manager: Create a culture of feedback, build a cohesive team, and achieve results collaboratively. But these relationships do not follow the rules of other relationships in our lives; they require a careful balancing act. You need to care personally, without getting creepily personal or trying to be a “popular leader.” You need to challenge people directly and tell them when their work isn’t good enough, without being a jerk or creating a vicious cycle of discouragement and failure. That’s a hard thing to do.

"Small Talk Is an Overrated Way to Build Relationships with Your Employees" is from hbr.org, published on July 25, 2017.