At this time in my life, I’m working menial jobs mostly. So I’d just prefer an overly nice boss.
I just want to get my pay and go home.
But if I were working in my dream career, I’d prefer the drill sergeant boss because presumably I’d care more about my results.
On his first day as our shift manager, Sturmtruppenführer José Mari called two of us and told us we were not allowed to talk to each other about anything. No taking any decisions, no matter how routine; we needed to get his permission before going to the bathroom; talking about non-work-related subjects was forbidden; talking about work was forbidden.
His third subordinate was his cousin. JM would greet him with a “hey you!” and a slam to the shoulder/arm that often left bruises. We told management to please move the cousin to another shift, because he’d never complain (he’s always been large, so if any fights broke it was always his fault, so he never complains about being abused or hit by someone smaller :smack:). The replacement was greeted with the same speech about “I’m the only one who is to do any thinking around here”.
I’ve also had bosses whose response to conflict was “let’s hug and make up!” - things around these sometimes implode, but it takes a lot longer and it requires someone deciding to take advantage of Mr Kumbaya’s spinelessness.
Yeah, well that probably works great if your staff consists of uneducated negros, chinamen and Irish. Times are different now.
My understanding is that the OP is giving a choice between an abusive, psychotic yelling boss and a passive agressive politicking backstabbing boss. IMHO, neither is acceptible.
An effective boss has to have qualities of both the “drill sergeant” and the “overly nice” boss.
Maybe the “drill sergeant” works in an environment where everyone is a bunch of fuckups who won’t respect a boss who doesn’t physically or verbally intimidate them. But in most professional settings, that sort of behavior isn’t acceptible.
This is exactly the way it was in one job I had.
The manager was a very nice guy, good at dealing with paperwork and our corporate overlords, but not so great when it came down to employee issues. If you ended up in his office for a talking-to, he would so vague with his criticism that you weren’t really sure what he wanted after your meeting. If there were any immediate problems among the lower employees that he had to deal with, it was always an attempt at a compromise as to not make anyone mad. But more often than not the issue would remain unresolved until he called in the assistant manager to take care of it, which often resulted in losing time and missing deadlines.
Now the assistant manager was a literal drill sergeant boss. That was his previous job before he retired from the USMC. He was gruff, almost insulting at times and didn’t take any bullshit. When he told you something there was no confusion with what he wanted and by god, you got it done as quickly and as best you could as to not bring down his wrath. If you didn’t listen to his instructions or didn’t satisfactorily complete a task, you were outside picking up litter in the parking lot. It didn’t matter if you were a sales person, stock boy, cashier or a shift manager. Everyone was held to the same standard. He didn’t just yell at you and make you do demeaning tasks though, he helped build you up and rewarded you too. One day he wanted me to set up a sales display on the floor. I was a sales person and thought manual labor stuff was out of my department. It didn’t help that I also had a painful burn on the palm of my hand from grabbing a hot pan at home the night before. I complained that it wasn’t my job and that my hand hurt so he needed to find someone else. He replied with " I know its not really your job, and that your hand hurts, but we need to get this done yesterday. I already assigned it to someone else but they didn’t get it done by the deadline. You’re the only person here today that I know can get it all put together right without taking all day. If you get this done by lunch I’ll make sure you don’t have to do any heavy lifting until your hand heals, and you can have the day after christmas off." After that I hopped to and got it done. He kept his word and kept me from having to help do stock and I got that day after christmas off.
Drill Sergeant Asst. Manager taught me a lot about dealing with employees and motivating people. Nice Guy Pushover Manager taught me that if there is a problem to deal with, go hide in your office & say you’re doing paperwork.
I’ve never had an overly nice boss who made my stomach churn and my heart sink in the morning at the thought of going to work.
That’s not to say they’re efficient managers but, if I’m picking one or the other…
It seems that a lot of you have a different definition of overly nice than I do. It does not allow the idea of someone who pretends to be nice but isn’t. An overly nice boss is one who doesn’t punish people like they should.
And, yes, that’s better than a drill sergeant boss. I’d actually prefer an incompetent boss to a competent one with anger issues. I think I’d have a nervous breakdown not retaliating.
Given those definitions, drill sergeant boss for me, thank you. I feel I learned my craft quickly because I had results-oriented mentors who were fair, constructive, and honest with their criticism, but also very curt and direct. I understand this approach doesn’t work with a lot of people, but it does for me.
Yes, I agree, that’s my definition of an overly nice boss, too.
As defined int he OP I understand:
Drill Segeant Boss to be very direct and clear in what is expected, has limited tolerance for work not done to the letter of/in the spirit of his way, and will not hesitate to point out errors or nonproductive patterns.
Overly Nice Boss to care deeply about the feelings of his subordinates, to the degree where their happiness and self-expression is a higher priority than production.
I don’t go to work to be happy, I go there to get paid. If my company performs poorly, it dies and I don’t get paid and that makes me unhappy. Also, if I don’t know what my boss wants/needs from me then I end up having to redo my work, all the while wondering why I even have a boss when I don’t receive any directions from it. This also makes me unhappy.
I’m all about the totalitarian leader.
I’ll take the drill sergeant, as long as he/she is competent and a good leader. I’d much rather know where I stand and get yelled at if I screw up than have a passive aggressive “nice person” who won’t give you any feedback.
One of the best bosses I ever had was about 15 years ago. He was British, and he didn’t pussy-foot around. If you screwed up, he told you so. If you did good, he told you that too. I like that.
My choice was not given: Overly nice boss who lies to your face and stabs you behind your back on a routine basis.
I had one of those at my last job. To our face, it was “oh, you guys are so great, your work is wonderful, bla bla bla”. Nobody believed him and nobody respected that because we knew the product we were working on was terrible. Then someone heard him talking to his boss, about how he was trying so hard but there’s only so much he can do with the employees he has… let’s just say word got around and our respect for him went from zero to outright disgust.
The worst part was performance reviews: “Well, yellowjacketcoder, out of a scale from 1 to 5, one being high, I have to rate you a 3” “What? I led both initiatives you wanted started, I have the highest issue turnover rate on the team and the second lowest bug count. Why didn’t you tell me there was a problem earlier!?” “Oh, there’s not a problem, you’re doing fine.” “Alright, tell me what I need to do to get a 1 next time” “Oh, just keep doing what you’re doing now” “Doing what I do now got me a three, how will that change next time” “Um, oh look at the time, I’m glad we could resolve this issue, bye!”
Boss before that was “Look, you have a bug, we can’t have that shit, if it keeps up the company will fail and we won’t have jobs. Fix it” “yes sir”. And it got fixed. If I finished early, it was “good job YJC, now I know I can trust you with harder stuff”. Performance reviews were “According you guidelines X, Y, and Z, you get this rating. If you want to improve, you need to do A and B and improve C from 50% to 70%.” “yes sir”.
Drill Sergeant boss doesn’t mean yell at you for no reason. Even at boot camp the Drill Sergeants have a reason.
Overly nice means avoid conflict at all costs, but sometimes conflict is necessary when there’s a problem.
I put “other”.
I’m not ducking the question, it’s just that I think it depends on the kind of job that you’re doing.
For some jobs it’s critically important for the workforce to be able to suggest changes to the way they work, and to feel empowered and have a sense of ownership. In such situations the drill sergeant can be much worse than even no boss at all.
For others, it’s critical that someone steers the ship, and even steering in the wrong direction is better than none at all. There, the overly nice boss is disastrous as eventually many will show up when they like and do what they like.
IME overly nice is better for most modern service jobs (though of course not optimal). Most teams are staffed with mostly highly-motivated individuals. If things go bad all the manager normally needs to do is give some authoritah to one of the team who’s comfortable being hands-on.