You expect a certain amount of respect, and along with that, you expect to be listened to. Yet, every manager finds themselves in a place at some point where their words have no effect. It’s like speaking into the void of space: absolutely nothing is getting through, no matter how vocal you are.

It can seem like your team isn’t paying any attention, and that feels like a direct blow to you as their leader. It rings of disrespect for your authority, doesn’t it? It stings, and the lasting effect is that you begin to doubt your ability to manage.

Look for Proof

Before you get too crazy about it, do a bit of recon. It’s important to know whether your team has actually heard your previous directions, and that’s best done by observing. Take stock of their actions – are the directions you’ve given been put into action? Is there a direct contradiction to what you’ve said?

In my view, there are three possibilities:

• Your staff are following your instructions – you just didn’t hear a verbal confirmation that you were heard.
• Your words have fallen on deaf ears. There has been no proof that your input has been put into action.
• There’s direct contradiction to your instructions. This is the worst – someone thinks they know better.

How You Respond

Just because you’re a manager doesn’t mean it’s easy to respond, but it’s a must. If you don’t, you’re not just allowing out-of-line behavior – you’re approving of it.

If you feel like you weren’t heard but your instructions ultimately were followed, it tells you that your communication needs some fine-tuning. This is easy. All that’s you need to do is ask for your instruction to be paraphrased or repeated back to you.

If you’re the manager whose instructions don’t meet resistance but aren’t put into action, you have a challenge on your hands. What’s happened is that, over time, your team has gotten into a rut. They run on autopilot, and that makes diverting from the routine difficult. Hands-on coaching may be necessary for implementation. More likely, it requires less managing and more leading. Simply telling your team which way to go is less effective than showing them the way. And remember that changing a routine takes consistent effort for at least 3 weeks before it becomes the new routine.

If you have someone on staff that goes completely against your instructions, there’s an obvious issue. It’s a case of someone thinking you don’t know what you are doing and undermining you, or it’s a person who really doesn’t like their job or where they work. But before you put the issue squarely on the employee, you need to evaluate the environment. Is your request unfounded? Are you micromanaging? Is the workplace becoming toxic? Or is there something personal standing between you two? Try to resolve issues that may be affecting performance before coming to the decision to terminate, even though that might need to be the end result.

Evaluate Your Instruction

You’ve already said it, so you have to ensure its compliance. But if you’re noticing that you are ‘losing the crowd’, it might be a professional development issue within yourself.

The tendency as a manager is to want control of every facet of operations. You know what that means in your own store. You may be getting tuned out by some if you start micromanaging every process instead of letting service happen organically and personally. If that’s the case, you should find someone in your team – your ‘number two’, for example – that you can trust to bounce ideas off before implementation. You want someone who is willing to tell you that an idea is dumb, redundant, or unsustainable.

Often, you’ll just find that people are being people. Change is difficult. Making something new routine takes a long time. There’s other stuff going on in each person’s life. You should strive to be sensitive and gracious to these things. Knowing someone is understanding can build strength as a team, and you’ll find you’re being heard more often.