Frances Horibe's

The Perils of Trying to Be Popular Your Employees I know, sounds ridiculous. If people hate you, you can’t get their cooperation, you can’t motivate them, they won’t help with reaching the unit’s goals and frankly, it makes for an unpleasant and stressful work place. So there are lots of good reasons why you want to be popular with your employees. But in a management position, you sometimes need to make decisions which aren’t popular with your unit. And in that weird way that is life, if you don’t make them, you’ll end up being disliked anyhow. Let’s consider what would happen down the line if your priority was being liked by your employees rather than being respected. Going for being popular So, let’s assume that you’ve been supervising the unit for a couple of years and have bent over backwards to be popular with the staff. This has included going for a beer after work, accommodating the personal preferences of employees, doing some of the work yourself to relieve the load, always being pleasant, and avoiding criticizing whenever possible. Let’s say you could be a fly on the wall for a conversation between two of your employees whom you…

Do You Need to be Likable to Your Employees? The dilemma set out in the previous post is whether, as a new supervisor, you should supervise a change to the work that everyone in your group wanted. You wanted to be likable and under pressure from Candice, your former colleague, now employee, you okayed the change. Candice drops by the next week. Candice: Hey, Mia. We released to the field three weeks earlier than we ever have. Looks like the change really worked. You: Hey, great! Candice: Yeah, everybody’s good with it. It’ll save a bunch of time and work. You: We should have done it a long time ago. Candice: See, I knew you’d be what we needed. You feel eight feet tall. You’re getting the swing of this! You supervise by listening to your employees and acting accordingly. After all, as Candice said, they know what’s really happening on the ground. Your boss calls you in A week later, Bruno calls you in. You’re pleased. You want to tell him about the success of the change you’ve made. Bruno: How’s it going? You: I think I’m getting the hang of things. Bruno: Uh-huh. I just talked to Noah…

Is It Better to Be Respected or Liked as a Supervisor? So, a promotion. Well done. You have taken over your old boss Albert’s job. You will now be supervisor to staff who, until you got this new job, were your colleagues. Honestly, this is a tough way to start in management. I think it’s actually easier to supervise people you don’t know in your first supervision job. But a promotion is a promotion and there is the whole thing about gift horses. Here’s a situation you might run into in the early days of your new role. How do you get respected as a supervisor? Candice comes into your office. Before you were promoted, you and Candice worked on many projects together. Candice: Hey, nice office! So how does it feel being the big cheese? You: Please. I’m not even a little cheese. Candice: I’m really glad you got the job. We can really get going now that old Albert is gone. You: Ah, I’ve had worse bosses. Candice: But you’re gonna be so much better. I mean, you’ve been down in the trenches with us. You: Well, thanks. I’ll certainly try. Candice: And, with Albert out of the…

How Not to Aggravate Your Boss In the previous post, we identified how you might inadvertently use a personal attribute to aggravate your boss. I’ll take each attribute and suggest how you might lower the threat level if you think it exists. Smarter You are: So you: Smarter Correct your boss frequently (or infrequently), especially in front of others In front of others, in a meeting—not good venues. If the correction must come, it should be in private. Now, I’m not talking “No, the bathrooms are on the left.” There are corrections of minor facts which should not aggravate. But if you are correcting on logic, strategy, policy, tactic or opinion, these are ones which might drop you into trouble. Rather than correct your boss in the meeting, do it in private. But even in private, NOT “You were wrong/misguided/mistaken…” INSTEAD “I was a little confused in the meeting. My understanding was that [insert your correct information], but in the meeting, it seemed that it was more [insert error]. Did I miss something?” Also, think whether the issue is important enough to raise at all. If it will prevent your unit from attaining its goals, perhaps. If no wars are…

You (Galen) have to re-allocate your budget to fund a new service which allows customers to design their own greeting cards.