What Is a Responsible Manager? Workplace Ethics and Best Practices.

Page Updated on February 3, 2023

A responsible manager is one who acts responsibly in managing and taking care of those employees and team members that s/he manages.

In addition to being attentive and a good leader, a responsible manager is also one who is able to manage her/his employees in terms of their mental health, career development, and who is sensitive and aware of cultural and emotional needs.

Let’s take a look below in more detail to explore the answer to what is a responsible manager.

Page Contents

1. Creating a Work Environment Where Staff Feel Able to Be Involved and Speak Freely

As a responsible manager, it is important that you enable and create an atmosphere such that staff feel comfortable to give input and to feel valued when they speak up in meetings and in front of colleagues.

A team member who is afraid to speak up for fear of being laughed at by colleagues for raising some new ideas is, of course, not what you want as a manager.

This ability to feel comfortable speaking up in the workplace is also called psychological safety.

To create a work environment that is conducive to psychological safety, emotional intelligence is a key skill to have.

So, as a responsible manager, you want to ensure that Emotional Intelligence is strong within the team you manage.

Likewise, as a manager, you should also seek to be emotionally intelligent in how you yourself work and manage.

In essence, emotional intelligence is:

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of your own feelings and those of others, manage your feelings, and use your understanding of emotions to create better relationships with other people.
As a result, people with high emotional intelligence enjoy better mental wellbeing and are easier to deal with compared to those who have low emotional intelligence.
Dr Valeria Lo Iacono

Improving emotional; intelligence in an organization for managers — >> **How to Improve Emotional Intelligence post**

2. Caring and Managing the Wellness of Staff Under Your Control

In terms of best practices at work in answering the question of what is a responsible manager, you will perhaps not be surprised to see that staff wellness is included.

Much greater awareness of employee and staff wellness and well-being exists these days in the workplace, and, as a responsible manager, this is an important issue to address.

I recommend making sure you include consideration for the following:

Digital wellness – can you, as a manager, better guide and support your team in terms of digital usage?
Do you attempt to help your staff with confidence building?
Do you provide mental support for staff working from home?
As a manager, are you and your team also aware of issues such as menopause that greatly affect many female employees in their 40s and 50s?

3. Being Culturally Aware as a Manager

As a responsible manager, it is also vital to ensure that your team (and you as the manager) have a good understanding of topics such as:

Intercultural communication – our workplaces are becoming more diverse culturally these days and providing training to your staff on a topic such as intercultural communication can be invaluable for team harmony and productivity.
Unconscious bias – we all have biases as a result of our influences from growing up but we can use techniques to be aware of how these influences can affect our decision-making.
Workplace culture extends also to generational diversity. Our workplaces are now becoming more diverse in terms of generations because employees are working to older age and this can mean that we have 4 or 5 different generations in the same workforce.

4. Being a Good and Effective Leader for Your Employees

Being a good leader is a key element in being a responsible manager and whether leadership comes naturally or not to you, leadership skills can be learned.

As a great manager, you will also be a great leader and be able to inspire those employees that you lead.

Leading by example is a great way to lead and attributes such as being hard-working, well-organized, emotionally intelligent, and firm by fair, are some skills worth seeking to perfect.

If you are a Human Resources (HR) manager or department looking to train your managers, supervisors, and team leaders in being better and more responsible managers then you might want to consider:

Dealing with difficult people training – to be a great leader as a manager you need to understand how to and how not to deal with people and this can certainly be challenging with some staff. There are techniques and methods for dealing with difficult people though.
Without good Presentation Skills, managers will sometimes struggle to communicate effectively and poor communication can lead to someone being seen as a weak and ineffective manager.
Inclusive leadership skills are also vital and training in this area for managers is worthwhile both from a business point of view and from an ethical standpoint. Inclusive Leadership is concerned with ensuring that managers and leaders in a company make all staff feel included, regardless of that employee’s gender, age, ethnicity, cultural and socio-economic background, sexual orientation, nationality, and level of ability.

5. Making Decisions That Are for the Benefit of the Company Long-Term

Decision making in business as a responsible manager

Importantly, a Responsible Manager is one who also places the sustainability of the company above his/her own needs.

A responsible manager, in other words, needs to do what is in the best interest of the company and for its sustainability, rather than for personal gain.

Factors that come under these best interests include:

Being financially smart and working within the budgets as required by the company.
Ensuring that all financial matters and ways of working are done legally, correctly, and documented as required.
Working to be fair to stakeholders within the business, other staff, suppliers, and everyone involved with the business, to the best of your ability.

This is a point that you may or may not agree with but there is a case to be made that a responsible manager is additionally a manager who seeks (but within the company guidelines and goals) to consider the greater good.

Many companies are now beginning to value the need to consider, for example, the greater good in terms of a global society.

We see efforts by many businesses, for example, to be more environmentally friendly as a business and to recycle, to avoid wasting power.

Likewise, considering offering staff flexibility to save on commuting time and pollution, is another example. Being a responsible manager extends to this greater good.

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Dr Valeria (Lo Iacono) Symonds

Involved with education for over 25 years, Valeria has taught at the University of Bath and Cardiff Metropolitan University (both UK) & Hankuk University (Korea). With a PhD, she has also worked as a researcher (Exeter University) & has many years of industry experience including with Cardiff University in management roles. She is the founder of Symonds Training.