I once had a boss who always smiled and asked me how I was doing when we crossed paths in the hallway. Every day at lunch he would sit at a large table in the cafeteria and more than half the department would join him for conversation. The only forbidden topic was work. If you were sitting nearby, you would see about ten of us laughing for thirty or forty minutes, sharing personal stories. Not once did I hear him say that he had an open-door policy. We all knew that we could walk into his office any time, and we did.
I also worked for another leader who repeatedly said that they had an open-door policy. That leader always looked stressed, rarely smiled, and barely acknowledged anyone in the hallway, evidently rushing to the next meeting. Their office door was closed most of the time. No one knocked on it.
If you have to announce that you have an open-door policy, you probably don’t have one.
The Ethical Leader 