“Be consistent, but don’t treat everyone the same” – Lesson I Learned @ UPS

While this may seem somewhat contradictory, it was something that began to make more sense to me after a few months of leading my team of employees. The employees I supervised all were responsible for relatively the exact same workload.  They each had their specific area and their 3-4 specific package cars to load.  It was my job to help motivate them to work hard throughout their 5 hour shift.  It didn’t take me long to realize that there were some people who I never had to check on and they would work hard and not slack off the entire time.  Other employees would obviously work harder when they knew I was watching. 

So I had to find a balance – I needed to treat each person fairly and lead them in a consistent manner, and at the same time hold them each accountable to do their work. I soon began to realize that I could not just take a cookie-cutter approach to each person to motivate them to do their job.  For example, some people responded well to regular monitoring, while others performed worse and felt like they were in trouble if I observed them doing their work for a period of time.  Some employees needed constant reminding of methods and procedures, while others simply needed an encouraging comment to help keep them focused and on task. 

Basically I needed to get to know each person individually and in order to find out how I could best help them succeed, without playing favorites or picking on the same people all the time.  This kind of leading is hard work, and I am definitely not an expert on it.  Being consistent is a lot harder than it seems, but I believe good leadership depends on consistency and treating the people you lead on an individual and appropriate basis.