Being the Boss....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Since about 1989, every position I’ve held, I’ve been the “director”, “manager” or what have you managing people from as few as 12-15 to as many as 300 at a time.

Some of my philosophies: (Please feel free to critique)

  1. That “management by walking around” stuff is truth. Your people gotta see you as someone that doesn’t just hang out behind a desk. Visit, mingle, listen. Someday you’re going to want them to follow you into a blind abyss and they’re more apt to do so if they know you and trust you.

  2. Lighten up. Don’t be a hard ass. People see right through false self-deprecating humor, but occasionally making light of your own shortcomings or quirks is generally ok. Me? I have the short term memory of a mosquito and have two walls almost covered with lists on dry erase boards. I’ll make a cup of caffeine in the Keurig and leave it there for twenty minutes, because I just forgot.

  3. “Hey Boss Guy, would it be ok if I…?” My first answer is always no. Then I call timeout and listen.

  4. Never give me the original of any paper I need to see. Make a copy and give me that. See above note re: short term memory.

  5. I work with school bus drivers. Daily I get calls from parents complaining about any one of a multitude of issues. 99.44/100% of them are bull product. But I listen, tell mom I will speak with the driver then promise a call back.

Two things: ALWAYS make that return call. And; ALWAYS stand behind your employee to the outside. Even if it’s one of those other times when your person is wrong. We’re family. I may tell the parent that the driver did something not quite up to snuff, but they will also know that the driver is a good person, has an exemplary record (and honestly, we have almost no real troublish drivers here) and you’ll ensure that whatever it is that went wrong will be corrected. The parent and the employee need to know you are going to do what’s right but you’re not chopping off anyone’s head over it.

  1. Listen to their ideas (see #3). I’ve been a manager for private school bus companies, and I’m at my second school district as an administrative level director of transportation. I have **NEVER **driven a school bus. I do have a CDL, so I can drive a bus, just not with kids in it, you need a School Bus Permit to do that in Illinois.

Every single one of my people has more experience driving a 40 foot long bus with their backs turned to 50 junior high schoolers at the end of the last day before spring break than I do. 90% of what I know about my job, I’ve learned from the people I manage. Involve them in their workplace. Don’t tell them you’re listening to their ideas then blow them off. It’s all about the credibility people!

That’s all for now. Someone brought home made coffee cake, I’m going to have to perform a spot inspection…

2

That’s the thing with being a supervisor/management/leader. You back your people in front of others, and then if you need to, you talk to them privately later. The most basic answer to why you do that is Loyalty. Not just loyalty to your people, but the loyalty that you hope and expect to receive from them. Because after all, if they know you’ll freely throw them under any bus that comes by, sacrifice them to the Will of the Customer or call them out on any little thing that comes up in front of others, why the fuck should they have the slightest bit of loyalty to YOU, since you clearly don’t have any to them?

And yeah, most complaints you will receive from the public are bullshit. They’re flat out lies, or they’re people who are refusing to accept your person’s judgement and are pulling this “You’re just a peon abusing what little power you have” self important asshole routine (that you sometimes see people expressing on this board), or their complaints are so minor and petty as to be ridiculous.

3

Sounds like a good list. And I think it sort of falls under “Lighten up” and “listen to their ideas,” but I’d add “Be humble.” Acting like you’re somehow more than a manager and that you’re never wrong (or have never fucked up) is a horrible way to manage people.

This comes from my experience as both a manager and managed staff.

4

Great point.

5

You sound like a leader, not a boss or manager (they’re different things, something too many people, especially those in management positions, don’t get).

I’d add something about mentoring. It’s really hard to be both a people manager and a mentor, but it can be done with effort. This goes along with listening to those that work for you, but add empowering those that work for you to be innovative and direct positive change themselves.

Also, ask for feedback and accept and learn from it. I had my performance review yesterday, and at the end, my boss (who is a leader/mentor) asked me what he could improve on. Because of our relationship, I didn’t hold back and was honest (in a positive way).

I just finished up a graduate level leadership studies course. For those of you interested, a few good articles on leadership (google searches should bring up free copies of most of these):

Rooke, D., & Torbert, W. R. (2005). 7 transformations of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 83(4), 66-76.

Rost, J.C. (1995). Leadership: A discussion about ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 5(1), 129-142.

Ganz, M. (2010). Ch.19: Leading change: Leadership, organization and social movements. In N. Nohria & R. Khurana (Eds.), Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (pp.527-568). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

6

And another thing I just thought of: The higher up on the ladder you are, the louder your voice is. Not literally, but my point is: the more power you have in the organization, the more terrifying you can come across when giving feedback or criticism.

Peer screaming their bloody lungs out at you=annoying and disrespectful.
Supervisor slightly raising their voice after something goes wrong=a bit nerve-wracking
Director offering feedback with a scowl=lost sleep for the next several days

As you move up the organizational ladder, adjust your tone accordingly, unless you want to terrorize your workforce. This is helpful to realize if you get promoted, and people you’ve worked with for years are now under you. You may think you’re the same old person, but in their eyes, you’re potentially a little scarier.

And I will second the notion of soliciting feedback. It’s helpful for you, and it’s often a positive experience for the employee, even if they choose not to offer any.

7

When it comes time to be a hardass, do it with authority. Wishy-washy discipline is no discipline at all. It’s fine, even ideal, to be friendly and approachable, but you can’t let that translate to “doormat.” Like a great man in a great movie once said, “…be nice, until it is time to not be nice.”

8

This one I don’t agree with. My first answer was sometimes no, sometimes yes, and sometimes “I don’t know if we can make that work.”

9

You sound like my husband. It started in high school when he always played the father in the class plays.

One word of advice. If you’re married you may have some difficulty seeing your wife as an equal. You may not notice this as a problem as long as you two are both working but when you retire you may find it difficult to stop supervising. And she will be the subject of your scrutiny.

Unless she is a Beta female this is going to make adjustment to the golden years tough for both of you. Consider now rather than later.

My “supervisor/leader” got so tired of me refusing to be supervised/lead that he had to go back to work part-time. :stuck_out_tongue:

10

Afterthought. Hopefully you can, as my husband has, learn how to be the object of supervision from your cat.

11

Years ago, I was given a head nurse position on a failing floor, in a hospital that had a less than stellar rep in the community.
I subscribed to your list pretty much to the letter. The floor improved to the point that the medical staff went from “Send the patient anywhere, but there.” to “Keep the patient in the ICU until a bed is available there.” I had to fire two people and discipline a few others, but I was as even handed as I could be.

One month, all of the head nurses were called together to make the final decision on the new hospital beds. We looked at dozens, we read the specs. We took time out of our days, sometimes, our own time, to make the perfect choice.
The beds arrived the day before we were to make the final decision. The upper managment chose for us. The director was a “my way or the highway” kind of guy.

I took the highway and never looked back. My floor went back to failing, and ultimately, closed. The hospital went under within a year.

Man With a Cat, you are the perfect manager. I hope your people, both those you manage, and whoever manages you, all appreciate that.

12

I ought to have tempered this with a note that when I blurt out “no” it’s done with a dose of humor and only with those I know ‘get’ that.

13

Ah. That makes more sense, especially given your flexibility in the rest of the post.

14

I always tell my guys that it’s their job to make me look good, and it’s my job to make their job easy. If it’s too hard to make me look good, they need to let me know.

15

My version is “when we fuck up I’m responsible. When we look amazing it’s all of us that did it”. Best boss I ever had told me that he assumed I knew how to do the essentials of my job, therefore he would tell me WHAT he needed from me and I would figure out HOW to do it. If I needed support just ask because that too is his job - to support me so he looks good.

16

Best boss I ever had said, and I’m paraphrasing because I can no longer remember the words nearly 20 years later;

My job is to help you do your job. Most of the time it’s going to be by making sure that you have the tools you need and then getting out of your way. On what is hopefully a rare occasion, it will be through the use of disciple, to make sure that you here and doing your job. Sometimes it will be by taking a bullet for you or by clearing a path. Sometimes it will be by helping you with difficult tasks, or getting others to help you with them.

And yeah, “Praise publicly, criticize privately” is huge. Any manager who doesn’t know and follow this doesn’t deserve to be a manager.