Being approachable is a timetable, not a personality.
The item people rate is “my manager is approachable when I need him or her”. The word that matters is when. Availability people can predict is availability.
Approachable means predictable: set a daily window, tell the team, keep it visibly, and go to them if nobody comes.
Most managers believe they are approachable because they would never turn anyone away. The team experiences something different: a closed door, headphones, a laptop lid, a calendar with no gaps, and a reasonable fear of interrupting. Approachability is not how you feel about being interrupted. It is whether people can predict a moment when interrupting is welcome.
Set the window
- Pick a daily window you can actually keep: the first half hour, the walk round at two, the last twenty minutes of the shift. One window, every day, same time.
- Tell the team what it is and that anything can be brought in it, work or otherwise.
- Keep it visibly: no headphones, door open, laptop closed, phone face down. The signals matter more than the policy.
- If nobody comes for a week, go to them in the window instead. Ask one person something you actually want to know.
On shifts, on sites, on calls
The window can be a place as well as a time: the end of the handover, the yard at ten, the first ten minutes of the daily call with the camera on and nothing else open. The principle is the same: a moment people can count on, kept visibly.
What it buys
Problems arrive early instead of late. Quiet people, who will never knock on a closed door, come in the window. And you stop being interrupted at the worst moments, because people have a better one.
The clearest thirty minutes in your week.
Send us your last engagement survey and we’ll show you what it’s missing – no charge, no deck, no obligation. Or start with a pilot or a 30-minute conversation.