I was reading Liz Ryan’s Businessweek column on the things crappy managers say via the MSNBC site the other day and reflecting that I’ve heard every one of these at one time or another, but I can’t recall ever saying any of them. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m some kind of world-class management savant; most of what I’ve learned about the practice of management came by trial and error (since business schools don’t teach the practice of management), and I initially took to it like a duck to investment banking. But if you stick with it, eventually it is possible to learn how to manage people without being a complete a-hole and doing things that will insult, annoy and de-motivate your people to the point where they spend more of their time daydreaming about pushing you into a giant septic tank than they do on their actual job duties. And the first step in this learning process is realizing that anything that would insult, annoy or outrage you will probably have the same effect on your employees…
Take, for example, such pithy demonstrations of wit as “If you don’t want this job, I’ll find someone who does” and “In these times, you’re lucky to have a job at all.” Ryan correctly points out that these are both annoying and stupid; threatening to fire someone for any suggestion that conditions are less than absolutely optimal is idiotic, and even in the worst possible economy (with 10% unemployment, for example) most people have jobs, and could get other ones if they really wanted or needed to. Not only do these statements not address the problem, concern or discontentment expressed by the original employee comment, they’re also things that any reasonable person would find annoying, if not arrogant, condescending and completely stupid. Telling someone that you don’t agree with their concern or that there is nothing that can be done about it is reasonable, but either of these responses just means that you’re slapping someone down for daring to challenge what you see as your authority…
Then there’s such control-freak favorites as “I don’t pay you to think” and “Who gave you permission to do that?” Ryan notes that the first of these usually means that the manager is either threatened by the idea or too lazy to think about it (let alone take action on it), or sometimes both, while the latter indicates a manager who is more concerned with maintaining a “proper” hierarchy than he or she is with using it to accomplish anything. A manager’s first duty is to accomplish whatever tasks are necessary, using as few resources (including employee time) as possible – and the task of maintaining efficiency, effectiveness, and morale in the workforce is always necessary. Any idea that helps you to complete that duty is worth having, no matter how unconventional it might, or how little you care for the source, and any hierarchical structure that interferes with that duty should be ignored, or at least minimized. Anything else is just egotistical crap…
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there is no such thing as a bad idea, or that employees should be allowed to just make up their own rules about everything; I’m not a “huggy-bear” type, and I’m not saying you should be, either. But the truth is, unless you’re employing someone as a piece of furniture, you are paying them to think, and if what they are doing is better for the company than the official procedure would be in the same circumstances, you are the one who gave them permission to do it – retroactively, perhaps, but I hope you did. The other side of the coin – telling someone that their conflict with another employee is their problem (not yours) is even worse; you’re the one who is being paid to run the unit and keep order, and failing to do so is just abandoning your job. But I think the worst one on Ryan’s list has to be telling someone that “I’ll take it under advisement…”
Stop and ask yourself how you feel when someone says that to you. Ryan points out that what this really means is “I am not going to do whatever you just suggested that I do, and I want you to know that I value your opinions less than I can tell you.” You don’t have to be a management savant to know that you should never say that to anyone, especially if it’s true. You just have to remember that any attempts at management that wouldn’t work on you are unlikely to work on anyone else, either…
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