Remember no matter how good a boss you are some employees will still think your a jerk. Don’t take it to heart. You are there to do a job. You will have employees that are unwilling to work with you to get that job done. Don’t get angry just set and repeat your expectations.
You don’t mention what level management and that can be important as in what your responsibilities are. All of the above.
Remember as manager you need to be the one who says what has to be said, when it needs to be said. That is not always easy.
Staff only see what you do at work. They don’t know if you are doing an extra four hours a night at home.
If there is travel involved you may be accompanied by your staff. Under no circumstances start fucking them. This can only end in tears. (okay= well maybe limited circumstances).
Last week at work we were talking about what makes a good boss and one of the guys said, “I’ve had good bosses and bad bosses. All of the bad ones were assholes before they were bosses.”
Don’t blatantly undermine your employees or make them look stupid in front of customers or clients, even if they have made a mistake.
Don’t yell at your staff in front of customers. Don’t call your staff stupid. Don’t be a complete irrational, unpredictable nutcase.
Provide your team with regular feedback. I meet with everyone on my team each week. We talk about things they did well, deliverables they met, etc. We also talk about things they can do to improve their performance, how they can enhance their skills. I know what each of them wants from their current position and I help them get the training/skills they need to get to the next level. One on one time also lets them discuss issues they have. This doesn’t mean they can’t come to me at other times. This doesn’t mean that I don’t take immediate action when warranted. Every person on my team knows that they have their time dedicated to them and their development each week. When they come to my office, they don’t think that they are in trouble or in for a load of extra work.
Be clear about expectations and consequences. I have a contract with all the people on my team. Understand that this is two ways.
Get to know your people. Know something about them. Work is work, but understand that they don’t get stuck in the storage room at the end of the day.
Find out what motivates them. Don’t throw monetary incentives at the guy who just wants a good job acknowledged by you.
Almost every day when she leaves, my boss thanks us. And she means it.
It means a lot to me that she does that. We’re not just mindless drones to her. My work is – gasp! – appreciated.
She also has no issue with getting down in the trenches with us. We get swamped by calls? She’s available? She starts answering them with us. Somebody up front calls in? She’s up there, even on a weekend if necessary. I hope she gets paid well, she deserves everything she gets and more.
I’ve had bosses who didn’t care and wouldn’t lift a finger to help us. Don’t be that boss.
The number one thing: understand your people are doing the job, not you. Your job is to help them do their job better. That means going to bat for them with your management to get resources or to get rid of the kind of stupid rules you might have noticed.
At the moment, you very likely can do the job better than anyone who reports to you - that’s why you got promoted. That won’t last. You need to do your job well, not theirs, and if you are doing their job you are not being an effective manager.
Praise publicly, but for really good work. You shouldn’t praise average work just to praise - it demeans it. Only criticize (privately) if you can give some positive feedback. Don’t tell someone they did something wrong, tell them how they could have done it better, or tell them something they did that could or did cause a problem and which they didn’t recognize. Just wait until you have to do performance review. You’ll know you did a good job on this if nothing you write is a surprise.
When you transmit information from above, try to figure out the reason for it, and explain it, assuming it makes sense. If it is a truly stupid command, transmit it as you much, tell people it has to be followed, but rolling your eyes is fine.
If you hire, hire people smarter than you are. Since everyone assumes managers hire dumber people, they will assume you are smarter than you actually are. Also, actually listen to problems, even if they will be a pain to do something about. They will be less of pain today than in a month.
Finally, don’t be afraid to admit you screwed up. I had a director, two levels above, me, who came down and apologized for a minor mistake. I apologized to someone who worked for me once, and she was loyal forever.
One thing that really boosts moral is to just pop by you employees’ desks to say “Good Morning. How are you?”
That’s it. No other agenda, just wish them a good morning. If your employee brings something up, be ready to listen and assist where needed.
Really - it makes a huge difference in how they feel about you.
I suppose it’s the same way you don’t be a jerk person. Based on my expriences and observations both with bosses and as one, here are some “jerk boss” behaviors:
-Playing favorites based on anything other than job competance
-Being unavailable
-Being pedantic about the stuff you should be laid back about and dismissive about the stuff you should be detail-oriented about
-Pretending like you know it all when you obviously don’t
-Abusive behavior
If you wouldn’t talk to *your *boss that way, then don’t talk to your people that way.
For the love of god, be a leader when dealing with employee issues and conflicts. Be fair and consistent. Good employees will respect you for it. Don’t let crap employees run your shop.
Good employees are also not stupid. They may not say anything, but they know when you’re being selfish or hypocritical or a wuss.
Lots of good stuff here!
My least favourite supervisor ever would become incredibly nasty when she had problems at home.
& she would continually tell me how wonderful she was. If you are that great we should already know! :rolleyes:
The best way to not be a jerk boss is to fire and replace all the people who think you are a jerk. Managers should strive to be knowledgeable, competant, respectful and consistant. But even still, there will always be employees who think you are a jerk simply because you are their boss.
If you have to fire one guy because he thinks you’re a jerk, then he probably was a disgruntled malcontent. If you have to fire ten guys because they think you’re a jerk, then you probably are a jerk.
Hell, fire everyone who thinks you’re a jerk and then invade Poland.
That’s just what they’re expecting.
Or as we like to say in the business world: Shift your corporate paradigm via right-sizing while seeking new opportunities in the emerging EU marketplace.
The only thing I’ll say that hasn’t been mentioned here already (and I *really *appreciate all the input you people have given **Lumpy **so far - you’re a great team!) is I *ask *people to do things - I don’t *tell *them. It sounds silly, but it’s worked well for me - “Bitsy, would you be able to fix the covers of the TPS reports today? Let me know if you can’t - thanks!”
I’m more comfortable asking than telling, and people have responded well.
I have a really good boss, and one of the things I admire most is that when someone screws up, the response is
- How do WE fix the problem? (Boss is willing to get in there and help out.)
- What happened to cause this problem?
- How do WE prevent this problem from happening again.
Notice that no blame was assigned. I have never felt worried about going to my boss after I’ve screwed up because I know I’m not going to get chewed out. The result is that problems don’t get covered up, they’re dealt with immediately and with the appropriate level of management involvement as needed. If the issue does need to be reported higher up the ladder, there’s no finger-pointing. It’s not “Taxi screwed up.” It’s “ was messed up. Our team has corrected the issue and taken steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.” I always feel like Boss has my back.
Now, if I was screwing up all the time, maybe Boss would need to take me aside and we’d have to have a talk. But for those occasional mistakes that we all make, this approach works great and builds a huge amount of loyalty.
That’s a good point, taxi. It is a huge relief to work someplace that is more interested in fixing problems than affixing blame (I’ve worked both kinds of places). The ones that are more interested in figuring out who to blame end up shooting themselves in the foot eventually anyway, because people then become more focused on hiding things and covering their asses than getting any work done.