9 Traits That Make A Boss Unforgettable

What are some commonly good traits that make a boss worth remembering? We have all had bad bosses that we won’t forget. We may even wish that we could fire our boss. However, for every horrible boss we leave, there are fantastic bosses who make us want to stay. Let’s look at 9 good traits of bosses that make us want to stay.

1. They inspire us to aim higher.
2. They defend us when needed.
3. They forgive our mistakes.
4. They recognize and reward our efforts.
5. They offer us a safe environment to grow.
6. They open career opportunities.
7. They develop our leadership skills.
8. They lead by example.
9. They show us that our work matters.

1. They inspire us to aim higher.

A good leader inspires us to greatness. Good leaders must also learn to motivate their teams to achieve targets that may seem out of reach. In the 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced RCA Team Leader Course, we discuss how to use the four motivators of human behavior to improve team performance. The four motivators are:

1. Time
2. Effort
3. Enforcement
4. Bonus

Learning to use these motivators to inspire your team is a good trait for a boss to master.

2. They defend us when needed.

A key trait for a good leader is knowing when discipline is needed and when to look for system weaknesses. Just because someone made a mistake does not mean they must be punished. Before making a case for discipline, you need to prove the broken rule was communicated correctly, appropriately enforced, had clear accountability, had not recently changed, and was possible to follow. If your management system is doing everything it should be, then the case for discipline can be made. This doesn’t mean you need to discipline employees, but it does guide leaders on the purpose of discipline in a robust management system.

3. They forgive our mistakes.

Good bosses see failures and mistakes as opportunities to improve. They cultivate an opportunity vision to avoid focusing only on blame and crisis management. A calm, empathetic, but firm response to failure fosters a stronger team. The SBI model for correcting employees is a good model for focusing on the actions, not the person.

• Situation – Describe the situation where observed behavior occurred.
• Behavior – Describe the behavior you saw take place.
• Impact – Share with the person the impact of the behavior.

To see a case study of this process, check out when Tom Cruise did not follow the SBI Model on set.

4. They recognize and reward our efforts.

Developing soon-certain-positive rewards is one of my favorite topics discussed in the 5-Day course. If you want to be an unforgettable boss, you need to become great at positive reinforcement. This is not a pizza party.

For a reward to have a positive effect, it must be genuine and feel deserved. Often, management overlooks people doing the right things. Rewarding positive behaviors is essential if you want employees to want to follow the rules and look for reasons to comply with them.

5. They offer us a safe environment to grow.

The environment a boss fosters can be as impactful as their own personality. Leaders are responsible for shaping the culture within an organization, and an oppressive culture will negatively impact a team. Employees are blamed for mistakes but never given the authority to change the structures, setting them up for failure. This results in employees hiding mistakes instead of fixing problems. You can see the culture this thought process creates.

To prevent blame culture a good boss fosters psychological safety in their team, allowing people the ability to bring up mistakes without fear of reprisal. This allows those bosses to have honest discussions about strengths and weaknesses. They use this to create a learning culture. We call this opportunity vision. We believe that management hires good people. If there is a problem, the people, either individually or in teams, work to solve the problem. Everyone views this as an opportunity to improve. This means that we are safe to grow and improve both ourselves and our organization.

6. They open career opportunities.

It is difficult to forget a boss that opened the door to your career. Unforgettable bosses recognize that their leadership role frequently involves investing in your long-term growth, rather than just improving your skills for the benefit of the current team. I think this quote from the show Ted Lasso sums up this philosophy the best.

TapRooT® is also looking to help your career in 3 key ways.

1. By providing you with world-class investigation skills through training.
2. Helping you find new opportunities to apply those skills on our job postings page.
3. Celebrating a decrease in injury statistics after your TapRooT® Implementation.

7. They develop our leadership skills.

We mentioned that unforgettable leaders allow you to build your skills through failure, but they also focus on building your skills in the present. Again, refer to the Ted Lasso quote above. Helping people become the best version of themselves, is key to becoming an unforgettable boss. Good leaders always look for opportunities to improve their team’s skills. If you are looking for opportunities to improve your team’s skills check out the Global TapRooT® Summit. It is an unforgettable conference of experts with 7-Best Practice Tracks to improve their skills.

8. They lead by example.

How does an unforgettable boss demonstrate what is truly important? It is not in what they say but rather how they act. Mark Paradies likes to tell stories about how Admiral Rickover, a truly unforgettable boss, would audit a ship. He would check for wet paint. If the paint was wet, it indicated that the ship had been freshly painted, suggesting they weren’t maintaining it in the same condition year-round, but were instead preparing it for his inspection. Wet paint means he needed to do a deeper level of inspection. Rickover used to say you get what you inspect not what you expect.

Like Rickover, unforgettable bosses must constantly demonstrate what is important to them by their example.

9. They show us that our work matters.

The last trait of an unforgettable boss is how they make you feel about the work you are doing. Is that work having an impact on other employees, the business, your customers, the environment, or even society? The best bosses help you understand the real effects that your actions have on the world.

For us here at System Improvements Mark Paradies explains the effect of what we do best in this Summit Talk from March 2020.

This quote from a customer stands out to me when I think about what I do.

“We probably have 3 people who are alive today because of the work we have been doing with TapRooT® who wouldn’t have been alive otherwise. And then I got thinking about how many people you train and there are probably 100s or 1000s of people alive who wouldn’t have been alive otherwise.”

Become An Unforgettable Boss.

If you want to build your skills and be an unforgettable investigator or boss consider attending the Global TapRooT® Summit. A truly unforgettable experience.