Managers behaviours and KM - staff as a Mirror to management

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I heard this interesting viewpoint today (thank you Catherine, from Volvo) - the idea of staff as a mirror to management, and how management behaviours and expectations are mirrored by the behaviours of the people who report to them.

Catherine was talking about how, when team leaders complain about staff behaviour or performance, this can often be traced back to the performance of the leader, and  the staff are subconsciously reflecting the leaders behaviour back to them.

So in knowledge management implementation, when staff in one part of the business are paying little attention to knowledge management, that is often a reflection that the managers also are paying little attention. Maybe the managers are saying the right things in support of KM, but perhaps their actions are saying something different, which is being reflected back in the behaviours of the staff.

So this is a useful check for managers who are implementing KM - look at the behaviours and attitudes of your staff, and treat this as a mirror of how they see you behaving, and how they see your attitudes.