Here is an excerpt from an article written by Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos that appears in the September (2011) issue of Harvard Business Review. To read the cmplete article, please click here.

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Successful managers depend on the capabilities of their subordinates: George’s marketing skills, Maria’s ability to run the numbers, Michael’s local knowledge, Dimitra’s IT expertise. Shelves and shelves of books offer managers’ advice on how to mobilize their people to achieve overall performance targets.

Although most upwardly mobile managers know that an empowered team enhances their performance, the everyday reality of corporate hierarchy and a compulsion to control their own fate can cloud that awareness. Many companies, particularly in the U.S. and western Europe, are abandoning the top-down, command–and-control model. Nevertheless, lots of managers still apply it, triggering a vicious cycle. When confronted with such a boss, employees respond by jealously guarding their only source of power—their distinctive experience—and the team is driven apart. The members may remain functionally interdependent, but that interdependence is ineffective, which means that a lot of value is squandered.

I have spent much of my career in companies and countries where this cycle of control and disengagement was especially vicious. For more than 30 years I worked for and then managed a family enterprise, founded by my grandfather in 1880, that traded extensively in Russia, eastern Europe, the Black Sea states, and elsewhere. After selling the business in the mid-1980s and for decades thereafter, I became an investor, researcher, and consultant for companies that were looking to enter those regions, as well as an educator.

In these roles, my biggest challenge was teaching bosses how to glean contributions from, and thereby promote engagement by, their local employees. Their job, I explained, was to ensure that every interaction with a subordinate fostered a sense of mutual dependence, or what I call “mutuality.” To help in that effort, I developed a set of lessons, which I share in this article.

The events I shall recount took place mostly in central and eastern Europe, but they can be applied universally, particularly at companies that still cling to top-down leadership and rigid hierarchy. Indeed, many of the managers I helped came from the U.S. and western Europe, and despite their formal management training they cultivated little more from their employees than their Soviet predecessors had done.

The lessons I share will seem familiar in the abstract, but the real value, as always, is in the details (although names have been changed to protect the innocent—and the guilty). Those details will help you compare what you and others in your organization are doing with what you know you ought to be doing.

[Here are two of the six that Vlachoutsicos discusses. To read the cmplete article, please click here.]

1: Be Modest

Modesty, virtue though it is, often clashes with basic fears. Many new managers are nervous about proving themselves, so they end up discouraging their subordinates from speaking up and thereby fail to benefit from their experience. Consider Kurt, the German CEO of a privatized Albanian canned-fish packing plant that I consulted for in the 1990s.

I sat in on one of the daily management meetings led by Kurt and attended by the heads of sales, production, finance, procurement, and government relations. The reporting part of the meeting went well. But then Kurt started talking. Both his words and his manner said, “Given that I know everything and you know nothing, here’s what you should do.” Condescending, absurdly detailed instructions were supplemented by irrelevant stories about how he had succeeded in solving problems. When he finished, an hour later, and asked for questions, the room seemed ready to ignite with one lit match. No one spoke, and the senior managers left silently and sullenly.

If you find yourself telling a self-referential story like Kurt’s, stop and apologize for blathering. You’re just showcasing your own insecurities. Recount your experiences briefly—and only if you can relate them to those of your subordinates. Prove to your people not that you have a record as a problem solver but that your ideas and advice can help them now.

Also remember to share both your mistakes and your successes. Trying to achieve that balance brings you down to earth in the eyes of subordinates, and it makes you reflect on why you are telling stories in the first place.

2: Listen Seriously and Show It

In general, managers are getting better at listening to employees. But their teams don’t always see it, or even recognize that it matters. I remember leading a turnaround at a Georgian flour mill that had been taken over by Western investors. Local supervisors were resisting the changes I had proposed, despite my best efforts to engage them in decision making. I sat down with one of the most disaffected managers, who said I had never listened to his reservations. “But I’ve been taking careful notes at all our meetings,” I told him. “Surely you must have seen that?”

“I saw you writing, yes,” he replied. “But you used loose sheets that I’m pretty sure you threw away afterward. If you were taking our input seriously, you’d be using a bound notebook, as you see me do.”

I assured this manager that I was keeping the notes, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. So the next day I brought in my ringed binder, and he saw for himself how I had meticulously recorded and commented on what I had heard. The change in attitude was remarkable. He and his colleagues recognized that I had carefully considered their advice before going against it, which made it easier for them to accept my decision. It all turned on the way I had taken notes!

This experience taught me that communication is multifaceted. People tune in to your body language, where you look, what you do with your hands. It can be hard to remember this when you’re in a meeting, but managing such signals is essential. (Whatever you do, don’t look at your watch or check the time on your mobile device while someone else is talking.)

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Charalambos A. Vlachoutsicos, a former businessman and frequent HBR contributor, is an adjunct professor in the International MBA Program at Athens University of Economics and Business. He is also a coauthor, with Paul R.Lawrence, of Behind the Factory Walls: Decision Making in Soviet and U.S. Enterprises (Harvard Business Review Press, 1990).