If you are currently a managing member of a team or if you aspire to be one, you should remember this quote:
“Managers get paid to eat the tension.”
A rough quote to be sure as a result of my own aged memory, but I will never forget when my first law school boss, John Delony, told me this. I’m sure this was in the context of a conversation about something that had not gone quite so well at an event and he was giving me constructive guidance he’d received from those above him. However, this phrase stuck with me, especially a couple of years ago when I started managing full-time employees for the first time in my career. And as I have continued to grow and manage new people, I always keep this thought at the back of my mind when I need to pass along feedback from above to my employee.
As a manager, it is your responsibility to take care of the workers you manage. We all have our own management styles. However, when things go wrong—and they inevitably will—and you hear from those above that corrective action is needed, it is important to remember your responsibility to look after your employees rather than defaulting to scold or punish them.
Even if you get yelled at, even if tempers or tensions rise in the meeting where you learn of the challenge, you eat that tension. Let the pressure end with you, instead of passing the same frustrating conversation onto your employee. For some, this may mean taking a beat before you meet with your employee to convey the message. For others, this may mean planning how you intend to have the conversation constructively if it is more urgent. This way, when you meet with your employee, you can have a clearer head, a softer tone as you offer guidance for moving forward, and not break the trust that you developed.
Effective management, especially with full-time employees—but also with part-time student workers—requires that you establish a two-way road of trust and development. If every time you take the tension from a higher-up back to your employee, you can erode that relationship even within just one instance. Instead, to build deeper respect you can (and should) accept some of the fault as your own, whether the error was a result of something you missed in training or if it was perhaps a careless mistake on their part. Doing so can also help the employee to realize that performing their position reflects on you and the whole team, just as much as them individually. And this can often encourage them to do better next time. Instead, if the opposite approach is taken, you can drive a wedge between you, creating a place where they do not feel integral to the team.
Of course, there is a point where multiple instances of the same thing can result in a firmer approach. However, I firmly believe that first times challenges arise—that is on me. It is my job to eat the tension, just as my bosses before me did, and to help my employee learn and grow. So, as you build your own management skills and philosophy, remember, you get paid to eat the tension.
(Erica M. Lux)
