5 Supervisor Mistakes That Can Breed Employee Backlash

Supervision is a game of chance. Winning or losing often depends on how you treat your employees. Are you:

• Fair or double-dealing
• Honest or hypocritical
• Aware or clueless
• Self-serving or an advocate

Attract too many negative labels and you may breed employee backlash–often the death knell of a supervisor’s career.

Emerging signs  

Managing the range of employee expectations is a daunting challenge. Supervisors who tune out employees will soon find themselves dealing with unwanted and unexpected behavior.

Suddenly, some or all employees:

• Stop giving input at meetings
• Grumble consistently about assignments
• Become de-energized and less productive
• Challenge policies
• Complain to others about you
• Resist your direction, overtly or covertly

You know the situation is serious when you observe these signs in your best employees.

Supervisors often unknowingly generate backlash when they see their management style through their lens only. A supervisor’s job is a juggling act. Upper management, customers, and suppliers often create an engulfing noise can make a supervisor deaf to the voices and needs of their employees.

Sadly, there are also many supervisors who, for some reason, are uneasy with their own employees. When that’s the case, they tend to go into hiding, in a sense.  They may stay in their offices, quote policy instead of owning their decisions, and/or take inflexible positions on the way work is done.

Communicate without fear.

Supervisors make their own trouble with employees when they don’t communicate what they do and why.

Many feel that if they say the wrong thing, they’ll get themselves cornered with employees down the road. But saying nothing only plants the seed for future conflict and backlash.

Here are six typical mistakes that supervisors make and how to avoid them:

1. Making a knee-jerk decision. Just because an employee wants an immediate decision doesn’t mean that you must give one, especially when you have several implications to consider. Instead, say that you want to give the request more thought with a decision forthcoming at a specific time. Then make sure you deliver it.
2. Taking a defensive position when challenged. Employees who question your decisions give you an opportunity to educate them about the needs and direction of the business. Your logic and insights help to expand theirs. If their questions cause you to rethink your position, then they’ve done you a favor and have created a special professional bond.
3. Being dismissive about employee input–Your employees are your team; they make or break your ability to succeed as a supervisor. Treating their input as insignificant builds a wall that can create animosity. Employee input is gold. It helps you understand expectations that you need to manage and can provide ideas that can lead to important improvements that everyone benefits from.
4. Avoiding face-to-face conversation–There is nothing more alienating to employees than a supervisor who is invisible, distant, and unapproachable. When employees feel disconnected from their bosses, their loyalty bond is likely to be weak. Supervisors need to be real by being present, eyeball-to-eyeball–not text-to-text.
5. Continuously quoting policies and procedures–Supervisors need to own their decisions to engender respect. Too many supervisors don’t want to make decisions that they may need to defend, so they quote a policy instead Policies and procedures set foundations and parameters but they aren’t recipes. Supervisors need to apply policies in ways that meet their intent. Employees expect you to take actions that deliver the right results in ways that support them..

Be there.

Being upfront puts supervisors in a position to create respect and confidence in employees. No employee believes that their boss will be right all the time. They just need to feel connected.

Supervisors who communicate with their employees, who are honest about what they do and don’t know, and who can be trusted to do what they say, will create the kind of relationship employees need–one that will hold up in good times and rough ones.

Photo from gever tulley via Flickr

Struggling with a Difficult Choice? The Answer Can Be Fit to a “T”

Making the right work decision can be stressful, even paralyzing. We just don’t want to get it wrong.

“What if I:”

• End up looking like an idiot or incompetent
• Lose all the career ground I’ve gained
• Cost myself or the company money
• Cause terrible embarrassment or brand damage

Too often we over-focus on the downside of our choices. However,  being overly optimistic about the upside can be a problem too.

“Finally I’ll:”

• Be the next in line for promotion
• Get a great bonus or raise
• Put the company/my work group on the map
• Have the team I need to lead like a champ

Too much pessimism and too much optimism are the enemy of sound decision-making.

Use your head not your knees!

Knee-jerk decisions can cripple your career. We decide that way when we’re:

• Overly emotionally about expected outcomes
• Impatient with the time factors and/or complexity of the choice
• Confused by things we don’t understand about the options
• Stressed by the pressures to decide

There’s no getting away from these realities, but you can replace those jerky knees with a calm and disciplined head.

There are lots of different kinds of decisions we have to make around our careers like:

• Which job offer to accept
• Who to hire or promote
• Which policy recommendation to accept
• What the most important priorities are

Usually, you’ll have a specific window of time when you have to make a decision, so you need a reliable tool to put into practice each time.

The “T” chart to the rescue!

“T” charts (or tables) are simple analytical tools. They rely on you to identify and weigh the right factors in advance of your decision, so you will balance the positives and the negatives.

Let’s say you have two reasonably comparable job offers and decide to use a “T” chart for each job that you’ll review side-by-side to help you make your choice. Here’s how.

1. On a blank sheet make two large “T” shapes–one for each job you’re looking at.
2. Across the top of each “T” write Pros and Cons.
3. To the left of both “T’s” write the criteria that you are looking at for both jobs.

Consider criteria like:

• Total compensation
• Characteristics of the work group
• Leadership and corporate culture
• Stability of the business
• Opportunities for growth
• Authority and autonomy
• Nature of the work

4. Write the pros and cons for each criteria for each job as you see them on each “T”.

5. Compare both jobs and base your decision rationally the facts you’ve assembled.

You can repeat this process for other kinds of decisions using different criteria in situations like:

Hiring/promotion decisions by considering the candidate’s

• Skills and knowledge
• Interpersonal style
• Leadership qualities
• Growth potential
• Experience

Management policy changes:

• Impact on the bottom line
• Employee readiness
• Timing and potential fall out
• Regulatory/legal implications

The more specific and relevant your criteria, the more likely you will assess your options effectively. The key is not to stack the deck and select criteria that support what you may want to do at an emotional level. You need to keep it real.

Weigh your options.

The cons (the negatives) are often seen as the deal breakers in any analysis. Many of them should be. However, all cons are not created equal.

Once you have looked at your decision-making data, revisit the cons column and see if any negatives can be mitigated. Are there legitimate ways you can make them less of a problem? If, for example, the total compensation for the job you want is less that your other choice, consider whether their job training and opportunities for promotion offer a better chance to advance and make more in the future.

Using a “T” chart to help you make important decisions doesn’t guarantee that you’ll always be right, but it will keep you honest with yourself. It’s just the rationale approach you need for a sound move forward. Choose away!

Photo from paul spud taylor via Flickr

The Art of Making Your Point–Avoid Getting Lost in the Sauce | Smart Communicating

Take a listen. There’s a lot of “noise” out there. Words fly around indiscriminately. We phone, we write, we text, and we post. We’re yak, yak, yakking, almost non-stop.

Communication is a discipline that has potent impacts on our careers. What we say and how we say it is an indicator of our:

• grasp of business issues and objectives
• commitments and loyalty to the team
• ability to see beyond our own self-interest

We may want to think that some things we write or say at work will be taken with a grain of salt, but that would be naive for employees and bosses alike.

What’s the point?

It’s easy to get lost in the onslaught of information, data, and voices that pierce the quiet we need for clear thinking. When we do, we allow ourselves to get distracted from what really matters in our work.

If you want to stand out as a real asset in your career, you’ll get serious about zeroing in on bottom line messages that convert confusion into clarity.

The biggest complaint that leaders have about managers and employees in their organizations is that they don’t have a big picture perspective that drives their performance.

Whether or not you have that perspective shows up in what you communicate and how.

Consider these two scenarios:

1.) As the boss, you regularly communicate to your work group how you continue to track data on group and individual output compared to industry and national norms, assessing how effective the team is in terms of corporate goals and achievement. (Wow, that’s a mouthful!)

The boss gives no clearly stated reason for crunching all these numbers. As a result his/her manager and employees are left to draw conclusions about the boss like s/he:

• Is a control freak
• Doesn’t have enough to do
• Wants the “mystery” around this data to drive employee performance
• Is using this analysis to avoid leading
• Has a secret plan for the future

It isn’t unusual for supervisors who are more comfortable with data than people to believe that gathering hard data will give them answers to otherwise “soft” problems. So they allow themselves to get lost in that sauce.

2.) As an employee, you’re asked to explain to your boss or colleagues what took place at a project meeting you attended as the group’s representative. Your explanation is about agenda items, who was there, what certain individuals said, what you said (if anything), and when the next meeting will be.

This kind of summary is essentially a data dump where the details and not the point of the meeting are what’s communicated. The result is perceptions that label you as:

• Lost in the details and boring
• Unable or unwilling to identify what mattered
• Lacking in summarizing skills
• A weak team representative

If, instead, you are able to separate the wheat from the chaff at that meeting, it is a sign that you do the same when it comes to your work. That’s how you build your communications credibility.

Look past yourself

Too much time spent in the sauce can drown a career. That means, to improve your communications effectiveness, you need to avoid:

• Getting caught up in the details for detail’s sake
• Getting lost in the drama of workplace relationships
• Keeping book on what others have said or done
• Keeping score on who’s got a leg up on whom

Refocus yourself so you can see how your work makes a difference, no matter how big or small, by:

• Explaining your work in terms of its impact on the company
• Offering your ideas as ways to improve things
• Telling your boss/employees/coworkers about concepts and processes you’ve learned that can help the team
• Summarizing the input and feedback swirling around and suggest actionable next steps

At work we all need someone who can turn the clutter of words into a clarity of understanding we can act on. So avoid getting lost in the sauce. Instead become the strainer!

Photo from Marken Phreely via Flickr

Supervising a Bad Apple? Consider Making Applesauce | Handling Problem Employees

“A rotten apple spoils the whole barrel,” it’s said. That means someone let one bad apple rot. Who?

Sadly, I’ve heard plenty of supervisors whine about problem employees and then, by doing nothing, let them spoil the work environment and their careers too. There’s no excuse for this.

Apple analysis

Supervisors are responsible for all the apples allocated to them.

Not every apple is crisp and shiny. Some have dark spots from bruises. Others have shriveled from their time in the barrel. A small number are decaying under the weight of the other apples.

So we need to pick through the barrel and:

• Put the good ones in the frig so they’ll last
• Turn the bruised ones into applesauce or pies
• Discard the truly rotten ones

This way we save most of the lot, getting full value from it.

Unfortunately, when it comes to “bad apple” employees, the first inclination by many supervisors is to come up with a plan to “throw them out.”

They use strategies like:

Passing the buck: The supervisor tells HR the employee is simply a bad fit and asks them to find the employee a job in another department.

Building a case: The supervisor starts to “keep book” on the employee, logging every performance and behavioral misstep, negative impacts on coworkers, complaints about them, and “potentially dire consequences” to the company if retained.

Driving them out: The supervisor makes the employee’s life as miserable as possible by either ignoring or constantly confronting them, nitpicking, reassigning work they like, and creating a no-win environment until the employee can’t take it anymore.

In these scenarios there will never be applesauce or pie.

Giving every apple a chance

Remember those bruised apples and the shriveled ones? Part of a supervisor’s job is to preserve them.

Here are some approaches:

Stop using the label: Whether you’ve hired or inherited a” bad apple,” stop using that label to describe him/her. It’s a negative that stokes dislike, fosters bias, and blackens their good points

Get over your dislike: Take your emotions out of the equation. Your job is to direct, correct, motivate, communicate, and provide feedback that will turn unacceptable behavior around.

Focus on actions: Discipline yourself to deal objectively with your employee’s actions and his/her  impact on the company and coworkers. What you see and hear is what matters, not what you suppose or interpret.

Insist on improvement: Provide specific feedback on areas of improvement, options for achieving it, and milestones to be met. Create clear accountability for making improvements in work output and relationships, with stated consequences if not attained.

Do what you say: Be trustworthy by delivering on your commitments to support  the employee’s improvement initiatives and on the actions you’ll take if they don’t turn around.

Employees who have successfully become bad apples stay that way because they’re getting what they want.  Unfortunately, for some, it’s a badge of honor that they flaunt. Some may be bullies, slackers, or malcontents.

The truth is that some of these employees have gotten themselves in a “negative identity” box they can’t get out of. Sometimes it just takes an effective supervisor to do what’s needed to help them get onto a better path.

Consider all the “bad apple,” ” bad actor” athletes who bounce from one team to another, until there’s that one coach who turns them around. There are examples everywhere that supervisors can follow.

Bad apple employees aren’t usually any happier in that role deep down than the supervisors who have to deal with them.

At least make applesauce

It’s easy to look into the barrel, see one rotten apple, and decide to throw them all out. No business can sustain that and no supervisor can justify it. Our job is to get the best out of our employees, recognizing that all of us have flaws that, if ignored, can be ruinous.

We need to deal with every employee in an open and fair way, helping them to realize their full potential. Perhaps they’ll thank you for helping them with a shiny red apple.

Photo from t1nytr0n via Flickr

Winner, Loser, or Also-ran? How Attitude Defines You

Attitudes reveal us—what we value, how we think, and what we’re after. They’re the stuff of statements like:

• “With an attitude like that he’ll be an obstacle on our project?”
• “We don’t need a supervisor with an attitude like hers?”
• “I can’t give him a good rating with that attitude.”

People observe our attitudes and then define us through their own attitude-shaded lens. Like it or not, we’re locked in an inexorable cycle of labeling.

Attitudes revealed

Attitude is defined as either a positive or hostile disposition or state of mind. Our feelings, thoughts, and points of view form our attitudes.

No matter how we come by them, attitudes become features like traits and characteristics that can work for or against career success.

We live in a fast-and-loose labeling world. There are labels for everyone in every profession and walk of life.

Politicians will label you as a conservative, liberal, moderate, progressive, or independent even if your viewpoints don’t fit their label for every issue.

At work, you’re put into attitude boxes like team player, go-getter, troublemaker, or bullier even when your attitudes are situation based.

Attitude labels stick, so we need to understand how we’re attracting them and how to turn them around when they’re a liability.

Look at yourself

Your attitude is the one thing in life that you always control. So if you’re displaying attitudes that are causing you problems you don’t want, change!

Start with some self-appraisal:

• Make a list of the positive and negative words being used by others to define your attitude.  (Reread your last two performance appraisals for insights. Listen closely to what your boss and peers are saying to or about you.)
• Next to each word, write 3 situations where you remember doing or saying something that triggered it. (If you can’t remember, ask a trusted coworker or your boss for help.)
• Talk to a family member or friend about how you come across in certain circumstances. Chances are your attitudes show up in you personal life too.

Commit to an attitude management plan:

• Identify actions you will take to retain positive attitude labels and fix the negative ones.
• Identify triggers that bring out your negative attitudes and how you will manage your actions and words when they appear.
• Schedule a meeting with your boss to discuss your commitment to improving attitudes that need work.
• Share your plan for change and solicit your boss’s support. Be as specific as practical.
• Make good on your plan by sticking with it.
  

The harsh reality is that attitude is more important to career success than talent. No one wants to work with a gifted leader or technician with a bad attitude. Good results are more likely to come from those with average talent who are happy working together.

The consequences of inaction

Negative attitude labels that go uncorrected can crush a career. Winners showcase can-do attitudes, collaboration, courage, and trustworthiness, even in the heat of battle.

The also-rans (ah, yes, another label) are those who go unnoticed. Their attitudes are often unrevealed, other than their willingness to just go along with what’s asked. They don’t make waves and they don’t progress much either.

Employees with negative attitudes often resist direction, find fault with all decisions, bully co-workers, and/or obstruct progress. They perceive they’re winning when their careers are actually in free-fall.

When our attitudes are on display, observers reinforce the labels they’ve assigned to us, until one day their labels have replaced our names. We become known as the:

• Obstructionist or Problem Child
• Hard-ass or Power Monger
• Team Player or Advocate

Negative labels can be dangerous. Just watch a political campaign and see how labels about what a candidate believes are turned into weaponry through name-calling and pigeonholing.

You need to protect yourself from unfair attitude labeling by renewing efforts to manage your attitudes effectively. If where you work doesn’t fit your nature, do the smart thing: Employ attitudes that serve you positively each day while you take steps to make a career change. You can do this!

Photo from Ayleen Gaspar via Flickr

An Employee Funk Rescue Tactic–Watch ‘Em Work. | Tailored Motivation

Motivating employees should be high on a supervisor’s to-do list. Too often, though, what’s tried falls flat.

Not every employee needs or wants:

• A go-team pep talk
• Artery-clogging donuts at staff meetings
• Certificates for weekly productivity achievements
• Public praise for a job well done (Many dread this)
• Brown bag lunches with the boss

That said, employees do want and need reasons to stay motivated.

No easy formula 

One-size-fits-all motivational techniques either don’t work or don’t last. They assume that each employee works based on the same drivers.

Motivation is a function of aspiration. If you don’t know what your employees want from their careers, then you can’t tailor motivators to fit them.

There are two ways to figure out how to motivate employees:

• Ask them what gets them energized to do more
• Watch how they work, taking note of what gets them going or stalls them

Once you know what motivates each employee, tailor your actions to their needs.

Take mental snapshots of your employees when they’re in gear and when they’re not. Think about what you can do to help and then take action like in these scenarios:

1. Mary is a staff engineer in a mostly male work group. She gets bogged down in the details when given repetitive assignments but becomes highly engaged when working on a team. That changes, though, when she gets the notion that her ideas aren’t being fully considered. If that happens, she disengages and becomes despondent. 

Watching Mary work offers a clue to what motivates her—work that provides her with visibility and recognition. When those aspects are absent, she loses energy and interest. One remedy is to schedule opportunities for Mary to showcase the results of her routine work and periodically assign her to be a team leader. 

2. Brian is a crackerjack IT troubleshooter, interacting with coworkers at every level, answering user questions, fixing glitches, and installing new software. He’s considered humorless and indifferent by some, cavalier and impatient by others, only when the workload gets overwhelming and coworkers are impatient.

Observations of Brian reveal changes in him when under stress. Instead of coming across as energized and enthusiastic about providing these expert services as usual, he comes across as resentful. Just like us, Brian has a stress threshold that, when reached, brings out negative reactions and attitudes. To keep Brian motivated, his supervisor needs to keep tabs on his workload and the conditions driving it. A weekly conversation with Brian on ways to manage his workload can become a strong motivator.

3. Martha, a physical therapist, was promoted to manager of a hospital-based exercise center. Her responsibilities include scheduling, recordkeeping, supervising professional staff, equipment maintenance and purchases. Her workday is full but not always fulfilling. She often stops to watch wistfully the client care being given.

Martha was promoted because of her technical capabilities and commitment. She’s wired to do an exceptional job no matter what. Although motivated to excel as manager, she misses those one-on-one caring interactions that she left behind and very likely is concerned that her skills will erode. Her manager can fix this by scheduling Martha to fill in for physical therapists when they’re out or by assigning a limited number of clients to her schedule and delegating some administrative duties. 

The price paid 

Poor motivation is contagious. Other employees catch it easily. When it becomes epidemic, productivity and quality suffer.

Low motivation among employees is a drag on the collective energy of the work group. It gives employees an excuse for not giving their best effort, fully participating in teamwork, delivering on their commitments, and believing that they have a future with the organization.

Remember the last time you felt unmotivated? Did your supervisor help pull you out of it? That’s a big part of a supervisor’s job. It’s important to pay attention to the motivational needs of your employees and give each one the unique support they need. Time to get motivated to motivate.

Photo from KaiChanVong via Flickr

Turning Employees Around—What It Takes | Feedback Power

Under-performers are part of the landscape in any workplace. You know who they are and so does your boss.

None of us is perfect. Without guidance, it’s easy to adopt behaviors and habits acceptable to us that, ultimately, don’t wear well with others.

As employees we need feedback from day one. There is no better (or cheaper) way to teach us the skills and behaviors we need to be successful.

Performance feedback is one of the most important roles of any supervisors. It’s how problems are nipped in the bud, skills are polished, misbehavior is corrected, and a continuous performance growth culture is built.

Getting through 

Supervisors resist giving feedback because they’re uncertain about:

• What to say
• How employees will react
• What to do if there’s pushback
• Whether they’ll make matters worse

Employees resist feedback because they:

• Don’t want to change
• Don’t get it
• Don’t respect their supervisor
• Don’t see any upside or consequences

To make the situation stickier,  employees may perform exceptionally well in some areas like production but terribly in others like on teams.

As a supervisor you need all employees to deliver value in all aspects of their jobs. That’s what you’re paying them for. To accept poor performance in one area is to accept paying a full salary for only part of the job.

“Can you hear me now?” 

Delivering feedback is one thing. Getting employees to hear and act on it is another.

That means you need to:

• Follow up on your feedback to make sure it’s being implemented
• Reinforce it through repetition, review, and discussion
• Reward or deliver consequences based commitments

Feedback only works when you have your employee’s attention. It starts with a conversation where you and your employee talk to each other. Each needs to hear what the other is saying and come to agreement on next steps.

It takes real commitment from both supervisor and employee. And often it takes repeated effort, time, and sometimes consequences.

Michael Vick, a dramatic case 

Michael Vick was a high performing employee as the quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons football team. He could throw and also scramble for yardage like few others.  Vick was a superstar who came from a rough background where he, as a kid and young man, he struggled to avoid the vortex of the streets.

After he went into the pros, he remained tethered to some unsavory people from his “old life.” For years he received feedback from coaches and others about his need to break those ties. He didn’t heed the feedback.

In 2007, he was implicated in a dog fighting ring and pleaded guilty to federal felony charges that resulted in 21 months in jail. Feedback didn’t get his attention but the consequences of not listening did.

Vick had to come to grips with what he’d done and turn it into advocacy. He had to restart his NFL career and recover from bankruptcy. Coach Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles gave him a job as a back-up QB in 2009 where he faced relentless negative public reaction. It was another round of feedback, often painful,vitriolic, and deserved.

It took positive performance to turn things around for Vick.

On Sunday, September 11, 2011, Michael Vick snapped the ball as the starting QB for the Eagles, winning the game 33-13 over the St. Louis Rams. He ran for 98 yards and threw two touchdown passes. He’s now playing with a multi-million-dollar contact, his life clearly on the upswing.

Michael Vick took a long time to hear it and paid a big price for ignoring feedback.

Hearing feedback pays 

It’s one thing to listen to feedback and another to hear it. It’s one thing to hear feedback and another to act on it.

Good feedback generally comes from people who care about us—people who want us to perform well, so we can experience success and growth.

Each of us is both a giver and receiver of feedback. We are positioned to help others turn around and ourselves too. There’s power in feedback. Let’s commit to using it well.

Photo from Matthew Straubmuller via Flickr

How Becoming the Boss Can Change You

Faults are often easier to see in others than ourselves. As employees we’re daily observers and targets of our supervisor’s style. What we see reflects what our supervisors have become. 

If we’re lucky, we’ve got a good boss. If not, we’d like to run for the hills. 

It’s hard to believe that ineffective supervisors used to be regular employees, like us. They had the same expectations from their own bosses for: 

• Honesty and respect
• Clear direction and the tools to do good work
• Open communication and the chance to be heard
• Fair performance feedback and opportunities to grow 

So what changes when those same employees become supervisors? Could it happen to you? 

What we see. 

There’s an endless list of perceived causes about what happens when coworkers become the boss or the boss’s boss or an executive. It’s a vicious chain that gets more toxic as poor supervisors get promoted. 

We often label those bad bosses as: 

• Drunk on power and authority
• Management’s pawn
• Afraid of making mistakes
• Micromanagers looking for scapegoats
• Protecting his/her territory 

These changes, affecting one-time, regular employees who become the boss, are often the result of fear, confusion, and struggles for career survival. 

What they discover 

No one who gets promoted really knows what they’re getting into. It’s all rosy and can-do at the interview. The promoting manager fawns over the new supervisor, declaring how s/he has all the right stuff to handle the task. 

The hiring manager promises all kinds of support. “I’ll be there to help you. We’ll be a great team.”

This is fine and dandy if the hiring manager is actually a good boss. If not, things can go south quickly. 

Remember this: You don’t really know what you’re walking into until you get there. 

Tests that can change you 

As a supervisor or manager faced with these situations, what would you do? 

• Your manager wants your performance ratings to form a bell curve. You have a high performing, veteran workgroup. You’re told to lower specific employee’s ratings.
• You recommend the best candidate interviewed for a job vacancy. Your boss disagrees and tells you to hire someone s/he knows and likes.
• You’re told to deliver a half-truth about the company’s financial shape.
• Your boss insists that you receive recognition for work done by one of your employees because it will look more impressive to the board.
• One of your employees, a valuable contributor, has objected openly to a policy your boss enacted. You’re told to build a case to get rid of him. 

Each of these situations challenges you to stand up for what you believe is right. Do you have the courage, influence, and leverage to resolve these fairly?

Or will you just do what you’re told, protect your own job, or make a token effort to do the right thing and then go along? 

These are knotty questions. They’re about how much you’re willing to put on the line. You will have to untangle a host of justifications, read between the lines, and weigh consequences. You’ll have to separate the right from the wrong.

There may be a lot of history, precedent, and perspectives to influence your thinking. You will now have insights that your employees don’t. Your vantage point is different from theirs and you will have to figure out how to bridge it. That’s what good supervisors do. 

Check yourself. 

If what you’re being asked to do doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. That’s the time to stop and think. Ask yourself: 

• What are the impacts and implications of this action?
• Who benefits? Who gets hurt?
• What more do I need to understand? 

Keep asking “why” questions of your manager until you get the clarity you need. At the very least, your questions may be all that’s needed to influence a change in direction. That’s how your business fitness works for you. 

Tomorrow you may become the new boss somewhere in your organization. Better to be the agent of change than the victim of it! Everyone’s counting on you. 

Photo from cbanck via Flickr

 

The “Aggravating” Supervisor Problem | What’s an Employee to Do?

There’s a lot of talk about “attitude” in the workplace: 

• “That employee is giving me a lot of ‘attitude.’”
• “If s/he had a better attitude, the work would get done on time.”
• “Good performance is about attitude.” 

Our attitude speaks to our disposition and/or our frame of mind. That’s the platform we start from when we come to work. Built into our attitudes is our sense of fair play, honesty, respect, and authenticity.  When we don’t get that from our supervisors, it’s aggravating. 

The “supervisor effect” on attitude 

We expect our supervisors to do right by us and our coworkers, to be principled, and to consider the good of the team over self. When they don’t, it affects our attitude. 

When supervisors aggravate us, we: 

• Become uncooperative, pushing back on direction and/or slacking off
• Resist requests to change the way we perform work
• Stop communicating, withholding ideas
• Won’t engage in new initiatives, our development, and/or stretch goals 

We become “negative” because we see no upside to aligning with the boss. 

Assertiveness is our friend 

The more we shrink from the aggravating heavy-handedness and insensitivities of our supervisors, the more we reinforce their behavior. 

Remember: We own our careers, so we need to ensure that we can perform fully and satisfactorily in them. 

When supervisors don’t listen to our ideas, provide for adequate communication, enable us to do our work, or reward us fairly, we need to take action. 

Okay, I know you don’t want to get in your boss’s face and risk losing your job. But there are things you can do and say respectfully. 

Here are six ways an aggravating supervisor may behave and how you can counter him/her assertively (in italics) when s/he: 

• Plays the command and control card—“I expect you to follow my instructions as given without question. Understood?”
• “What would you like me to do if the process breaks down? Shall I just continue? Or would you like me to contact you? I’ll follow your instructions.”
• Thinks s/he’s the smartest—“I know the best way to solve this problem, so there’s no need for a meeting on it.”
• “We have two people in the department who dealt with a similar situation before you took over. Does your idea include their input? I mention this because I know how important the result is to you.”
• Doesn’t listen or acknowledge—“Yes, I heard you. I’m so busy. I’ll get back to you later if I have time.”
• “I can’t proceed with this project without your input. I’d like to schedule a specific time to meet later today. When are you available?
• Finds a way to make you wrong—“You could have gotten that project completed a day before deadline if you had only used the newly installed software.
• “I was gratified to meet the demanding deadline. Using the newly installed software would have cost us a day because users were unfamiliar with it.”
• Provides no rewards—“Well, team, the largest project we’ve ever been assigned was successfully completed. There will be no compensation or recognition for your extra hours. That’s just they way things are these days.”
• “Even though the company can’t compensate us for extra work, there are other ways we can celebrate our achievement. I have a few ideas or would you like to start?”
• Runs over you—“I don’t have time to wait until you get up to speed on these new regulations. I’ll assign it to someone else or do it myself.”
• “With all due respect, this is my job responsibility. I am fully committed to doing what is needed to learn this material. What specifically must I do and how would you like me to proceed?” 

Turn the tables 

Most supervisors don’t want to aggravate us, but just do. And, yes, we also aggravate them. Instead of complaining, we need to help to turn an aggravating supervisor into an engaging one? Ready to try? 

Photo from jean-louis zimmermann via Flickr

When the Boss Isn’t Cutting It, What’s Really Wrong?

It’s no fun falling short. Most bosses know when employees don’t like or respect them. They often act like they don’t notice or are above caring.

Who can blame them for needing a coping mechanism?                                                         

As employees, we often assume our bosses know better—that they are ineffective on purpose. Everyone weighs in on what they believe the boss’s defects are: 

• Poor communicator or decision-making
• A pawn of upper management
• Power-seeker who likes pushing people around
• Biased or favorites player
• Incompetent or in over his/her head 

Too often, the bosses don’t know what they’re doing wrong or are afraid to find out. 

Seeing things clearly 

Twice I was called by bosses who were faced with serious employee push-back problems. 

One told me that she needed help with her communications skills. Her employees told her she was too blunt, didn’t listen, and was impatient. “Could I help her fix that?” she asked. 

The second told me that his boss was exasperated by negative employee feedback that was rising up, with employees citing his impatience, unwillingness to “do his job,” and quick-trigger decision-making. “Could I help him fix that?” he asked.

To make a long story short, what was wrong were symptoms of what wasn’t there. 

These were two leaders who recently took over organizations where employees were: 

• Unaccountable for results
• Unaware of the declining conditions of the organization
• Working in silos, adverse to collaboration
• Protective of their position/situational power
• Resistant to change

It wasn’t each boss’s personal style that was the problem but the absence of business best practices. They had both inherited organizations from predecessors who failed to lead. 

 Set employees up for success 

For bosses in this predicament, the first step is to refocus employees on the work and their roles. Success in business is about getting the right things done and not letting personalities, personal agendas, and unrealistic expectations get in the way. 

The two bosses I worked with were committed leaders—smart, courageous, visionary, and caring. So why were they perceived as being ineffective by their employees? They weren’t using basic management tools. 

Here were the issues: 

• Employees were doing their own thing
• No one saw the big picture
• Expectations within and outside were unrealistic
• Dissention and internal competition were rampant
• Accountability was non-existent 

In each case, the bosses made no changes to his/her personal styles. Instead they implemented business management best practices: 

• A “state of the organization” presentation to staff, clarifying the conditions and risks they were facing
• A goals scorecard that stated in measurable/observable terms the outcomes to be achieved during the year
• Updated position descriptions, rewritten, reviewed, discussed and agreed upon by the team
• Individual performance goals developed collaboratively with the boss and each employee, aligning each employee’s work with the organization’s goals
• Regularly scheduled progress meetings with action-oriented, time-boxed agenda items
• Immediate dialogue to address issues, concerns, and performance 

Each boss put these tools in place. The first turned a declining non-profit into one sustaining positive growth and solid jobs in hard economic times. The second became the “poster child” for effective department management in his organization. 

Getting on the right track 

These two bosses were on the verge of seeing their careers go under because they assumed the problems they were facing were about their personal styles. Trying to remake themselves would have gotten them nothing but frustration. 

This is not to say that there aren’t some bosses with toxic personalities who are the problem. For them, supervising others is the wrong job and someone needs to fix that. 

Most bosses don’t have to change anything about themselves, but they must learn to cut it as effective managers! 

It takes time (and often courage) to get these best practices in place and there will be some employee resistance that bosses need to overcome. Without best practices in place, however, real improvement and employee engagement are highly unlikely. Are you ready to give it a try? 

Photo from Nathan & Jenny via Flickr