I stressed that we respect each other, and I also managed each as an individual. When there was conflict, I generally looked for common goals, and stressed them. I treated them as family. I made sure they all understood that the company's goals were always foremost to me, but that they came second; even before my own needs. I gave them whatever time they needed for family and/or personal reasons. I supported them through life crises, and had their back.
I also -and this is important- acted as a buffer between my team and my company's rather rapacious HR. This actually got me in trouble, a couple of times, but was really appreciated by my team (and also by some very highly-placed managers, in Japan).
No ridiculous team-building exercises. I used to take my team out for a nice dinner, every holiday season, and my own expense (the company would not cover that kind of thing). This was very much appreciated, and my team did not abuse it. We still get together, once a year (if possible), but these days, it's dutch.
The team stayed together and highly functional, for over 25 years. When they finally rolled it up, the engineer with the least tenure had ten years.
I'm fully expecting a deluge of fairly nasty and abusive posts about this, but that's my story, and I'm sticking with it.
I appreciate you being straightforward with priorities/goals (company’s THEN the individuals’). I think an awful lot of managers fail because they try to act like friends with their team and then get hit by the reality of whats expected of them and it gets real awkward at best.
Rigorous Honesty is critical in my management. I need to be honest with myself, my superiors, my coworkers, and my employees.
It's quite possible to keep things confidential without lying. I've done it for many years.
Another drawback of my style, is the employees become loyal to me, not the company. If I had left, they probably would have lost the whole team, fairly quickly. The company didn't seem to mind that.
Can you share any insights into how it gets defused? I'm a recovering cynic, and so is my manager. Sometimes we get into a feedback loop, which isn't great.