Last week in the newspaper there was a feature on another book about bad bosses. It seems that there’s an inexhaustible supply of these people. We know that bad bosses are poisonous, but we just can’t seem to escape them. Why do organizations persist in installing these people and letting them suck the oxygen out of the workplace? Why do organizations make the same promotion mistakes over and over again?
What excellent questions! We’ve known for forty years that doing the work and supervising the people who do the work are qualitatively different jobs, requiring different skill sets. And yet we seem to have reserved the right to ignore this in our promotion and hiring decisions.
So, at the same time as we acknowledge that people leave managers, not organizations, we continue to provide employees with managers who will cause employees to do just that. We want to reduce turnover and retain our key people, but then we put staff in the position of getting their work done, not with their managers’ help and support, but despite their managers.
I think what we need to recognize is that there’s no test, no questionnaire, no assessment instrument that will reveal how an individual who has never been in a position of authority will use authority, or power, when they get it for the first time. I think this is because we all have needs that are unknown to us, that we nonetheless spend time and energy satisfying. Not even the most introspective of us are immune to this.
Some examples of hidden needs may be:
- To be in control
- To be noticed
- To avoid
- To ‘win’
- To dominate
- To ‘disappear’
As a result of these hidden needs, some management actions that appear to others to be inconsistent, harmful, negligent, mean, and/or not in the interests of the organization, its clients, or its employees, appear to the manager who takes such actions to be necessary, benign, helpful, decisive, and/or good. By satisfying a hidden need, the actions help the manager to feel better; the manager associates the actions with feeling good. The actions function as a kind of mood-altering drug. As with any drug, the effects wear off, and the actions have to be repeated.
It follows from this that special care needs to be taken when hiring or promoting someone into their first supervisory job. Here are some things to do, and not do, that can help to avoid creating a toxic boss.
- Don’t assume, if you’re promoting from within, that the best worker will be the best choice for supervisor. As noted above, the jobs of frontline worker and supervisor are qualitatively different. The skills necessary for success are different.
- Don’t promote by seniority. Just because an employee has been with you for twelve years doesn’t automatically mean that they have twelve years experience. They may have one year of experience twelve times over.
- Ask the employees that you’re thinking of promoting if they want to supervise other people. Make sure that they understand that they’ll be expected to give away their current job and focus on supervising other people’s performances. Employees who say they don’t want to supervise are doing you a big favour. They’re saving you from making the wrong promotion decision.
- Train the new supervisor. Creating a new supervisor requires more than a laying on of hands. Avoid the trap of Promote and Pray: “I hereby dub thee supervisor. Go forth into the department and supervise. (Oh, God, I hope she works out).” Nobody is born with skills in delegation, giving performance feedback, interviewing, teambuilding, helping people manage their time, or any of the other supervisory behaviours, and they’re not taught in school. You have to train them. There is really no getting around this. Supervisors who don’t have the skills needed to do the job will work to satisfy those hidden needs without the skills to do anything different. They’ll equate feeling good with doing a good job, because they don’t know any better. An untrained, unskilled supervisor is your boss from hell.
- Observe the supervisor’s performance and provide feedback. Sit in on a hiring interview that the supervisor is conducting. Observe a coaching session. Listen in on how the supervisor interprets a new procedure when explaining it to staff. (Always explain to the other parties the purpose of your presence.) Then go away and come back later to give your feedback to the supervisor on the performance that you observed.
But (I hear you say), I don’t have time to do all that! I have some sympathy with this reaction. We’re all time-challenged. However, the potential alternative to a trained supervisor who knows that her boss expects skilled supervisory performance, is a person with authority over others who meets their own needs, hidden and otherwise, instead of their employees’ needs. This is what causes people to look for employment elsewhere.
When employees see that you’re holding supervisors responsible for skilled performances, they see you being a leader. People who are confident in your leadership will be disinclined to leave.
To submit a question for a future column, or to comment on a previous one, please contact editor@charityvillage.com. No identifying information will appear in this column. For paid professional advice about an urgent or complex situation, contact Tim directly.
Tim Rutledge, Ph.D., is a veteran human resources consultant and publisher of Mattanie Press. You can contact him at tim_rutledge@sympatico.ca or visit www.gettingengaged.ca.
Disclaimer: Advice and recommendations are based on limited information provided and should be used as a guideline only. Neither the author nor CharityVillage.com make any warranty, express or implied, or assume any legal liability for accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in whole or in part within this article.
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