Blogging the Boss

Don’t look now but your boss could be reading your blog.
End result is you could be fired! As more than one unfortunate person found out the hard way when posting comments about their managers.

The trouble with managers is there are as many bad ones as there are good ones. I say this with experience having been in and out of management and technical positions too many times to count.

You start working for a company in technical capacity and you soon find out that you have little control of what goes on around you and or your job. This makes you think that the grass may be greener if you where a manager. You could make things change for the better, both for you and your fellow employees. Unfortunately is just doesn’t work that way, at least not all the time as you (the manager) discover that you also have a manager that you report to and his or her ideas/plans don’t necessarily agrees with yours.

Warning:
Any managers that may be reading this blog, then read the next part very carefully.

One of my first jobs started out as a tester on the production floor. About once a month the president of the company would tour the facility and take time to talk to some of the employees on an informal and one on one basis. The amazing thing was that he knew your name and the name of each of nearly 1000 employees. The company was sold and as time went by I eventually reached the Operations level of management, which in simple terms meant that on any given day I was responsible for the entire plant. I never forgot the simple but meaningful lesson of taking the time, no matter how busy things got, to talk to the people that worked at our location and other companies I work for over the years.

What makes a good or bad manager?
My experience tends to the ‘Leaders are born and not made’ theory. Far too often an individual who has demonstrated excellent technical knowledge and achievements time and time again finally receives a promotion to a management position. At this point they become like a fish out of water, floundering and jumping around on the beach in a desperate search for something that will save them and their project. Unfortunately no amount of management training will save them; it only serves to prolong the agony for them and everyone under them. In the end desperation settles in and they begin to take it out on the employees as a form of relief. Sometimes it can be so subtle that it hardly noticed by anyone except for the person in the center of the bulls eye. Other times it reaches the point of intimidation, threats, abusive language and on and on.

Now here this!
A good manager treats their employees as assets, just as valuable or more so than capital equipment. They help them when they need help, they provide training to sharpen or broaden their skills; thus making them more versatile. A good manager will reward them for doing a good job, even if the only thing they can do at the time is to say: thank you for a job well done. Most importantly they do everything possible to make an employee’s job rewarding and a success. You see if your employees succeed then you as a manager succeed.

A bad manager is one that takes their frustration out on their employees, belittles and berates, screams and threatens, makes unrealistic demands, offers no help when asked, spends more time trying to climb the ladder than manage the tasks given to them, is never available when you need them and always around making small talk to their pet employees totally oblivious to the rest of the team who feel like their in the dog house. They often arrive in your section or department offering great things for the future but seldom deliver, moving on to their next assignment and leaving behind a shambles.

Let me finish by leaving you with a real story.
It’s about a small group of engineers I was asked to manage. They where looked upon as I soon found out with extreme disgust by every other manager in the plant. Every Monday I would attend a meeting along with other managers, which was held by the plant manager for the purpose of reviewing the schedules and tasks given to them from the previous week. This person would take delight in running everyone up and down the flag pole for things that did not go as planned. At first I was an easy target and received more than my fair share of his foul language. Over time as I re-arranged the tasks assigned to my group to better match their skill set we were able to meet everything asked of us, thus I was no longer one of the poor slobs that had to endure the plant managers wrath.

One day after completing a particular hard set of tasks on time and in budget, I wanted to show my appreciation to the team, but had no money to give them as a bonus, or even a framed letter of appreciation. So I called everyone for a short meeting and thanked them for a job well done. After the meeting one employee approached me and said “Jim you are the first manager ever to say thank you”. Having known these engineers for a long time, even before I was there boss and had meetings over the years with each of their pervious managers, some of which I had held in high esteem, I was shocked in disbelief and said not even John (not his real name) and he said no, not ever.

Remember: it cost you nothing as a person to say thank you every once in a while!