Two of my friends’ bosses, as well as a manger at my mom’s retirement home, all seem to engage in the same frustrating behavior. They say they want people to come to them with any problems, but then they don’t listen and don’t want to hear it, or else they attack the person reporting the problem instead of dealing with said problem.
One boss just wants cooperation and kum-ba-yah harmony among everyone, no matter what; no conflicts allowed. The other regards any complainer as a nutcase and then says that person has a bad attitude. The retirement home manager sides with the crappy "chef" instead of with the residents. If you go over his head to corporate, he wants to know why you didn't come to him with your issues. Well....because he doesn't care to hear them if you do.
Is this some kind of bizarre management style, or is a case of assholishness? Have you encountered this? What can be done about it?
Managers are supposed to say that, so they do. But I think most of them really don’t want to hear problems. OTOH mangers are only supposed to help solve problems relating to their area. Other problems aren’t really their concern anyway.
There is a technique of listening until the person with the problem figures out what to do. Is this happening?
Generally speaking, it’s a lousy management style if the manager never gets back to the employee. If someone complains, there should be some kind of response, even if the response is to explain why the situation is not going to change. (Or why the complaint is unreasonable. We get a lot of those.)
But also, I am skeptical of the secondhand stories of bad bosses. You only ever get the perspective of the complainer. 99 times out of 100, there is more to the story.
That’s right up there with “I have an open door policy!”. I’ve never seen a manager say that who didn’t keep their door closed (and often locked) most of the time.
It works both ways, too. Anytime the purported situation is absolutely completely one sided but the wrong person gets their way with impunity I assume most of the story is missing.
Then on the other hand, if you have a situation where the employee makes a pretty good point, but you can totally understand how the manager is coming at the situation… well then the management style suddenly doesn’t seem so awful.
It’s the style of management that gets you promoted at most companies. Your boss never gets bothered by complaints from your department, the troublemaking workers there tend to leave, etc. – what’s not to like for the grandboss?
It’s not an actual management style in the sense of being something that managers are trained to do as part of some sort of established management theory, if that’s what you mean.
What you describe typically sounds like the behavior of an inept and uncaring manager. They are telling you to “come with your problems” because that was something they were told to do or read about in some sort of management handbook. What they seem to forget about is that they actually have to address the problems as well.
Why even bother with it unless it’s a Mom&Pop? In a well-run organization, you either just want stroking, are trying to jump the chain of command, should be talking to HR, are too lazy to fill out a Near-Miss report, etc. etc.
In the case of the retirement home manager, I have had the up-close-and-personal experience of witnessing it repeatedly since I have a family member in that place and know many of the residents. Many complain to one another but have all but given up going to management about inedible food because so little gets done–and because they don’t want to be pressured to move out (that’s very hard on old folks) or treated like nutcases (many of them are still within their right minds–it’s not a nursing home or assisted living).
There were better chefs in the past. The one they’ve had there since late last year has sucked big time, yet she’s still there.
Hell, there were better managers in the past, too. That’s why the fam m. moved there in the first place.
Or maybe it all just goes back to the people at corporate. Shit rolls downhill, right?
Speaking as a manager, in all fairness, some employees just come with problems and expect you to make them magically go away without the employee having to actually do anything.
I’m dealing with that with one of the junior project managers on my team. He’s constantly bitching about feeling overwhelmed or given vague projects where he’s “not set up for success”. So when I look at the root cause of the problem and tell him “you are feeling overwhelmed because you are short on critical staff and are trying to fill in for them yourself…lets talk to the practice lead about getting you more resources” or “yes, the project requirements are vague…I need you to document what is known and what is not known and then I expect you to track down the answers to the unknowns so we can define what success looks like”, he looks at me like I asked him to suck my dick.
What I think, and what I’ve basically told him, is that he sounds like what he really wants is for me to tell him he doesn’t have to do his job and that I’ll just have someone else do it for him. From his perspective, he probably feels like management is ignoring his problems. From his manager’s perspective, it feels more like he doesn’t want to do his job and work to solve his problems, he just wants them to go away.
Anybody that has been in any leadership position ever has had subordinates that just want to show up and complain, as if their boss has some magic wand hidden away that will fix all your problems.
I was a director at a summercamp once, and I had two staffers come to complain about the tents we set up in their program areas. One came to me with “Ugh, the tents suuuuuuck” - “Ok, what do you want me to do about it?” “Uh, make them not suck?” “Go back to your program area”. The other came to me with “Hey, one of our tent poles is too short, mind if I go through the spares and find one that fits” “No problem, just stick it in the golf cart and I’ll even drive you and it back to your program area”. I’m sure first guy thought I was a dick, but second guy actually got his problem solved.
The other thing I got out of camp was that there are three sides to every story. The first person’s side, the second person’s side, and the truth.
“What do you want me to do about it?” was the wrong question. You didn’t even know what the problem was, due to the complainer not articulating it properly. You should have asked questions about what exactly the problem was with the tent. The complainer was surely not the only one affected by the tent problem, so the “natural consequence” of having tent problems because he couldn’t complain constructively had unnecessary collateral damage, plus you acknowledge that his takeaway was probably just thinking you’re a dick, so it’s not like you taught him a valuable lesson or anything.
They expect you to have solutions because you’re the manager, plus they want to avoid being blamed if they implement a solution you don’t like.
I’m a strong believer in bringing solutions (it’s how I ended up in my current line of work, my team grabbed a project away from the consultants), but sometimes you can’t, or you bring a solution and the boss ignores it.
Last boss I had who pulled that crap was of the species msmith described so well in post 11. Dude wanted us to go to him so we wouldn’t go somewhere else (including to each other), but not only did he not solve problems, he was a big source of them. If every person in your team tells you that the users need Excel training and offers to teach it, the solution might involve setting up some training sessions - not telling the client that his people’s computer skills are great.