We’ve all got them, and we’ve all heard them: horror stories about bosses and managers we’ve had—megalomaniacs or complete incompetents (or both)—who can make a day at the office an exercise in psychological survival.

No shock then, given that the current labour climate in Manitoba makes this province a worker’s market, that a manager who fosters a toxic work environment often creates a revolving door for employees. That can spell doom for the entire enterprise.

What then, are the top traits of a good manager?

Although it might sound trite, providing staff with a sense of meaning, says Barbara Bowes, columnist, author and president of Bowes HR, is key to today’s healthiest work environments. “Today’s employee wants to be fully engaged, so a good boss is a participative manager who invites their employees’ opinions, listens to what they have to say, and tries to find win-win solutions to problems. They make sure that they structure a job so that it’s challenging, and that it is also a whole job. In other words, an employee who only does a piece of a job, and is not able to see the end result of his or her work, will not find as much job satisfaction. That’s why you see a lot of manufacturing companies—like Boeing and Standard Aero, for example—moving to what is known as cell manufacturing, where that cell does the full product, and not just a piece of it, with all employees involved in all aspects of production.”

Got an old-school shark in that corner office? Good luck with that. “A good boss demonstrates integrity and trust,” Bowes explains. “In other words, they do what they say they’re going to do. That old adage —and I hate it—that says ‘walk the talk’ is true.”

Providing a real “open door” policy (and this is where walking the talk might come in to play) is essential. However, managers can experience difficulty walking that line between promoting the good communication and collegial environment present in a healthy workplace, and maintaining some sense of authority. The trick, says Bowes, is in understanding that relationship. “A lot of managers have come up through the ranks and were friends of their (now) staff on the way up. They have to recognize that they can’t have that relationship anymore. At the same time, they have to help those employees deal with the loss of that relationship. The term they use today is ‘emotional intelligence’—being very aware of your own emotions and what triggers or bothers you; being able to recognize the emotional responses of your employees; then being able to use emotion in order to get things done and to influence people.”

A successful manager also adopts what Bowes refers to as an issues approach: What is the situation, what is the impact on the company, what are the solutions, what is their impact going to be, what do you recommend and why? “You also have to teach your employees to think that way,” emphasizes Bowes, “so that they don’t just come with a problem and ask you to fix it; they come with a problem that they’ve thought all the way through, including some possible solutions and recommendations to offer. Then you can engage them in a conversation to agree on a plan of attack.”

Some of this stuff might seem very straight forward, but as you know, good bosses are hard to find, begging the question: Are good managers just born that way, or can it be taught? Bowes thinks that for the most part, it’s the latter. “At the same time,” she says, “a manager who excels has also got natural traits that are highlighted and improved through training. The best managers have a combination of the two.”

Ultimately, concludes Bowes, what it all comes down to is good communication and interpersonal skills. “If they don’t have those, they are not going to be able to develop the relationships. That’s not a technical skill.”