Sylvia MelenaSupportive Leadership Improves Performance
Leaders who effectively identify and meet the support needs of employees are in a much better position to unleash employee potential and boost workplace performance.
What is Support?
In the Supportive Accountability Leadership Model, support is anything the employee reasonably needs to achieve strong job performance. An employee won’t be able to succeed and sustain success over time without adequate support. Supportive leadership fosters a work environment where the employee can thrive.
The Most Important Source of Support
As a direct leader, you’re the most important source of support for the people on your team.
You Wield Significant Influence
You have substantial influence, and this influence impacts the quality of the workplace and the success of your organization. This requires that you bring your best to work every day. Research has consistently shown that the supervisor-employee relationship influences employee perception of support, engagement, commitment to the organization, turnover intentions, ethical behavior, and ultimately performance.2
You Impact Employee Retention
The quality of your relationships with the people on your team affects their perception of organizational support. And these perceptions affect retention. In fact, these perceptions are more influential than any variable in the workplace .3
You Matter the Most
This underscores the vital role that you as a leader play in creating a supportive and empowering work environment that can retain top talent, keep employees healthy, and promote the success of your organization.
The way you approach employee performance management can either increase or reduce stress and burnout for employees. That’s why it’s crucial to have a strong and supportive management process.
As a leader, you matter the most.
This small excerpt was reprinted with permission from Supportive Accountability: How to Inspire People and Improve Performance by Sylvia Melena. Minor edits were made to the original text.
About the Author
SYLVIA MELENA is the Principal of Melena Consulting Group, a leadership and organizational development consulting firm. She is also the two-time international award-winning and best-selling leadership author of Supportive Accountability: How to Inspire People and Improve Performance and its Spanish translation, Responsabilidad solidaria: Cómo mejorar el rendimiento laboral por medio del apoyo.
References:
1 Florence Stinglhamber et al., “Employees’ Organizational Identification and Affective Organizational Commitment: An Integrative Approach,” PLoS ONE 10, no. 4 (2015): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123955. Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
2 Ishfaq Ahmed et al., “A Literary Look at Outcomes of Support at Work,” Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 5, no. 12 (2013): 3444–3449, http://maxwellsci.com/print/rjaset/v5-3444-3449.pdf. Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
3 Florence Stinglhamber et al., “Employees’ Organizational Identification,” 1–23.
4 J.D. Tony Carter, “Managers Empowering Employees,” American Journal of Economics and Business Administration 1, no. 2 (2009): 41–46, http://thescipub.com/PDF/ajebasp.2009.41.46.pdf. Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
5 Cody Logan Chullen, “How Does Supervisor Burnout Affect Leader-Member Exchange? A Dyadic Perspective,” International Business & Economics Research Journal 13, no. 5 (2014): 1113–1126, https://doi.org/10.19030/iber.v13i5.8777. Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
