How some managers fail in managing their workers
Credit to Author: REY ELBO| Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 16:46:42 +0000
EVERY now and then, when business operations are proceeding smoothly, you invite your workers one-by-one (starting from high-flyers to deadwoods) for a casual meeting inside a conference room. To establish immediate rapport, you start with neutral topics and proceeds to explore the status of certain projects.
Then you show them your biggest smile (or a polite smirk for deadwoods) to manifest your satisfaction and acknowledge them for their time, treasure and talent in making them all possible, without looking fake. It’s not yet performance appraisal time, but you find it worthwhile from time to time to ask the following questions to feel the people’s pulse:
“How can I help you succeed in your career goals? How can I make your job easy for you? What other resources would you be needing? How would you like to have more responsibilities in the future? How do you like my management style? How would you like to be given freedom in doing your job?”
As the boss, you know your employees want to grow in their jobs. They want to earn more money, and gain prestige inside and outside the organization. To the underperformers, you try to look at an imaginary mirror to find out if there’s something wrong with your instructions or management style. You believe in humanity. You know that many people want to do a good job. They would want to be challenged and be given responsibilities.
However, there’s no one-size fits all solution for your co-workers. There’s no right answer. Every answer is correct insofar as the individual employee is concerned. It depends on the personal circumstances of the employee, partly decided by their age, marital status, educational attainment, and of course, ambition.
This is ideal and desirable. But for some managers, it’s not. This brings us to the case of Glenn (not his real name), a department vice president in a medium-size organization. He’s rough and a tough boss and is not used to pampering people with those questions. His oft-repeated instruction to his people — “my way or the highway!”
It’s a strong message coming from an incompetent boss. Glenn lacks the initiative to establish a proactive two-way communication process with his employees. In 1969, Laurence Peter in his book “The Peter Principle” warned about the typical case of Glenn who was promoted many times to his “level of incompetence.”
During his first six years in office, Glenn was recognized for his consistent, above-average performance that he was rewarded as a department supervisor until he reached the post of a full-fledged manager in 10 years. Not bad for someone who was a C student in college and worked his way up in the corporate ladder.
His luck was broken when he became vice president for operations and started showing his unusual arrogance to his people resulting in close to 23 percent annual attrition rate. The revenue is down at an average of 15 percent per annum since five years ago. This was made worse by poor product quality and low labor productivity. Despite that, Glenn thinks there are many factors that led to these problems and that he is not one of them.
Figuratively, he saw that the ladder rungs below him are burning. He can’t therefore retrace his steps. He thinks there’s no way but up to the roof top. He clings to his rung until finally losing his grip and fell to the ground with a fractured hip, incapacitating him for life. But literally, he was pushed out of the organization by the chief executive officer.
It’s too late for him to ask: “Where do I go from here?” To avoid a similar situation, what would you do?
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their international bestselling opus “First, Break All the Rules” (2005) recommend that all managers must spend the most time with their direct workers and measure their work relationship with this simple exercise. Get a blank sheet of paper. “On the left hand side of a blank sheet of paper, write down the names of the people who report to you in descending order of productivity, the most productive at the top, the least productive at the bottom. On the right-hand side, write down the same names, but this time in descending order of ‘time you spend with them,’ the most time at the top, the least time at the bottom. Now draw straight lines joining the names on the left with the appropriate names on the right.”
Find out the result. According to Buckingham and Coffman, you’ll find yourself spending the most time with your least productive people and the least time with your most productive people. “After all, your best employees can already do the job. They don’t need you. But those few employees who are struggling? They need all the help you can give them. Without your support they might not only fail as individuals, they might also drag down the entire team.”
Don’t take the words of Buckingham and Coffman. Make your own conclusion. Try that simple exercise and find out what you’re missing in the communication process.
Rey Elbo is a business consultant specializing in human resources and total quality management as a fused interest. Send feedback to elbonomics@gmail.com or via https://reyelbo.consulting