Back in the day there emerged a concept called Management by Walking Around. The idea behind it was pretty sound: you can’t lead people from behind a closed door, but instead need to get out there and see what they are doing, listen to what they have to say, and so on. It is a motivational tool and also a way to keep information flowing and communication open. This works better than an “open door policy” because honestly, that’s a pretty passive thing for the boss. You are waiting for employees to come to you and one problem with that is, by the time they DO come to you, it is often because a problem has gotten big, a problem that could have been dealt with sooner.

Anyway, Management by Walking Around is a very useful idea. It gained popularity in a time before e-mail, so some might say that now information and communication can flow electronically without the need for personal contact. I think that is wrong. First, your employees need to know you are interested in what they’re doing, and getting out from behind your desk demonstrates that. Plus, they might be doing some pretty specialized tasks, and that is simply not going to translate in an e-mail. And of course, if they are having trouble producing, you will have a better idea why if you have actually been out there interacting with and observing them.

But there is another way this could go…what I call Management by Wandering Around. This one is not so great. For me, there is a big difference between this and Walking Around. Walking Around is all about 2-way interaction with your employees so you can create a better workplace and a better product. Wandering Around is all about self-gratification, cornering your employees so they have to listen to you. It is about walking into people’s cubicles with your coffee and interrupting the flow of their work. Too often, it is about walking in and regaling them with tales of your time in the French Resistance, or this great restaurant you found in Kuala Lumpur. Ultimately, you end up abusing your authority — because really, people can’t just tell the boss to go away — by making people listen to you even when they have better things to do.

The worst, of course, is when you wander into people’s work and tell them how to do what they are doing when you don’t have any real expertise or knowledge of what they’ve done before now.

So try not to be that manager. Get out there, yes, and talk with your employees, but that means talk WITH, not just talk TO. Communication goes both ways. And if you get the feeling that by strolling around the office you might be annoying your employees rather than motivating or helping them, you are probably right.