Post by rcksthill on Feb 9, 2013 15:50:55 GMT -5
Crossing a Very Dangerous Line
Date: February 5th, 2013
Work with some people long enough and it’s only natural for friendships to form and flourish. It happens all the time – managers find themselves befriending employees who are respectful, loyal, friendly, and most importantly, fanatically productive. The manager is happy because he feels he has a reliable and loyal right-hand man, and the employee is happy because he feels a strong sense of security.
But even the best of friendships can spontaneously combust, turning your friend into your biggest adversary who can make your life miserable and cost you your job if you cross one of the following lines:
1. Discussing the confidential matters of other employees, managers, or the company. This can really come back to bite you no matter how much you feel you can trust your office buddy. These secrets have a habit of slipping out of mouth purely by accident, and if the news is good enough (highly gossipable), your confidant will surely tell someone else “in confidence.” (Please read between the lines here) Ten minutes later, when everyone knows about “it,” the source (you) will be tracked down like an injured deer.
2. Sending off-color emails to your office buddy. Trust me, these rarely make it to the recipients little trashcan in Outlook. Remember that vulgar email you sent to your office friend three years ago that was supposedly so hilarious? Yep, he’s still got it, and so does his attorney because he’s filing suit against you, and your company for wrongful termination based on the discriminatory content of that email. That email is now called “Exhibit A.”
3. Getting suckered in. This may sound cynical, but the reason employees may be so friendly towards you is that they are counting on you, as their manager, to get approved for raises and promotions. If, and when the opportunities come and you don’t award them accordingly because they didn’t meet corporate expectations and because someone else is more deserving, watch how quickly that friendship fades away, which brings me to my next point…
4. Promoting someone based on your personal relationship with them or office politics. Even if it’s slightly obvious that you prefer one employee over the others, you need to be very careful about who does, and who does not get awarded a promotion. Employees can pick up on the slightest scent of office friendships and will waste no time criticizing you, and your friend who received the promotion.
5. Lie, fib, or cover up for anyone. If you never lie, you’ll never need to remember what you said.
6. Say things you’ll regret. In the heat of an argument, some people have a habit of using strong language just to make a point, and worse, the argument may turn personal. There’s no reason conflict should ever reach such an altitude ofemotional hijacking. Conflict Resolution is one of the most important skills leaders must practice consistently – it ensures that problems are diffused at the very first indication of a problem instead if waiting for problems to cure themselves, which they never do.
Someone will always be looking to you as an example of how to act. Make sure you don’t let them down. And all too often, office friendships are only as good as the health of the professional relationships between a manager and his employee.
______________________________________________________
9 Hidden Qualities of Stellar Bosses
What your employees see you doing matters. But often it's what they can't see that matters more. Good bosses look good on paper. Great bosses look great in person; their actions show their value. Yet some bosses go even farther. They're remarkable--not because of what you see them do but what you don't see them do.
Where remarkable bosses are concerned, what you see is far from all you get:
They forgive... and they forget.
When an employee makes a mistake--especially a major mistake--it's easy to forever view that employee through the perspective of that mistake.
I know. I've done it.
But one mistake, or one weakness, is just one part of the whole person.
Great bosses are able to step back, set aside a mistake, and think about the whole employee.
Remarkable bosses are also able to forget that mistake, because they know that viewing any employee through the lens of one incident may forever impact how they treat that employee.
And they know the employee will be able to tell.
To forgive may be divine, but to forget can be even more divine.
They transform company goals into the employees' personal goals.
Great bosses inspire their employees to achieve company goals.
Remarkable bosses make their employees feel that what they do will benefit them as much as it does the company. After all, whom will you work harder for: A company or yourself?
Whether they get professional development, an opportunity to grow, a chance to shine, a chance to flex their favorite business muscles, employees who feel a sense of personal purpose almost always outperform employees who feel a sense of company purpose.
And they have a lot more fun doing it.
Remarkable bosses know their employees well enough to tap the personal, not just the professional.
They look past the action to the emotion and motivation.
Sometimes employees make mistakes or simply do the wrong thing. Sometimes they take over projects or roles without approval or justification. Sometimes they jockey for position, play political games, or ignore company objectives in pursuit of personal goals.
When that happens it's easy to assume they don't listen or don't care. But almost always there's a deeper reason: They feel stifled, they feel they have no control, they feel marginalized or frustrated--or maybe they are just trying to find a sense of meaning in their work that pay rates and titles can never provide.
Effective bosses deal with actions. Remarkable bosses search for the underlying issues that, when overcome, lead to much bigger change for the better.
They support without seeking credit.
A customer is upset. A vendor feels shortchanged. A coworker is frustrated. Whatever the issue, good bosses support their employees. They know that to do otherwise undermines the employee's credibility and possibly authority.
Afterword, most bosses will say to the employee, "Listen, I took up for you, but..."
Remarkable bosses don't say anything. They feel supporting their employees--even if that shines a negative spotlight on themselves--is the right thing to do and is therefore unremarkable.
Even though we all know it isn't.
They make fewer public decisions.
When a decision needs to be made, most of the time the best person to make that decision isn't the boss. Most of the time the best person is the employee closest to the issue.
Decisiveness is a quality of a good boss. Remarkable bosses can be decisive but often in a different way: They decide they aren't the right person and then decide who is the right person.
They do it not because they don't want to avoid making those decisions but because they know they shouldn't make those decisions.
They don't see control as a reward.
Many people desperately want to be the boss so they can finally call the shots.
Remarkable bosses don't care about control. As a result they aren't seen to exercise control.
They're seen as a person who helps.
They allow employees to learn their own lessons.
It's easy for a boss to debrief an employee and turn a teachable moment into a lesson learned.
It's a lot harder to let employees learn their own lessons, even though the lessons we learn on our own are the lessons we remember forever.
Remarkable bosses don't scold or dictate; they work together with an employee to figure out what happened and what to do to correct the mistake.
They help find a better way, not a disciplinary way.
Great employees don't need to be scolded or reprimanded. They know what they did wrong.
Sometimes staying silent is the best way to ensure they remember.
They let employees have the ideas.
Years ago I worked in manufacturing and my boss sent me to help move the production control offices. It was basically manual labor, but for two days it put me in a position to watch and hear and learn a lot about how the plant's production flow was controlled.
I found it fascinating and later I asked my boss if I could be trained to fill in as a production clerk. Those two days sparked a lifelong interest in productivity and process improvement.
Years later he admitted he sent me to help move their furniture. "I knew you'd go in there with your eyes wide open," he said, "and once you got a little taste I knew you'd love it."
Remarkable bosses see the potential in their employees and find ways to let them have the ideas, even though the outcome was what they intended all along.
They always go home feeling they could have done better.
Leadership is like a smorgasbord of insecurity. Bosses worry about employees and customers and results. You name it, they worry about it.
That's why remarkable bosses go home every day feeling they could have done things a little better or smarter. They wish they had treated employees with a little more sensitivity or empathy.
Most importantly, they always go home feeling they could have done more to fulfill the trust their employees place in them.
And that's why, although you can't see it, when they walk in the door every day remarkable bosses make a silent commitment to do their jobs even better than they did yesterday.
And then they do.
Date: February 5th, 2013
Work with some people long enough and it’s only natural for friendships to form and flourish. It happens all the time – managers find themselves befriending employees who are respectful, loyal, friendly, and most importantly, fanatically productive. The manager is happy because he feels he has a reliable and loyal right-hand man, and the employee is happy because he feels a strong sense of security.
But even the best of friendships can spontaneously combust, turning your friend into your biggest adversary who can make your life miserable and cost you your job if you cross one of the following lines:
1. Discussing the confidential matters of other employees, managers, or the company. This can really come back to bite you no matter how much you feel you can trust your office buddy. These secrets have a habit of slipping out of mouth purely by accident, and if the news is good enough (highly gossipable), your confidant will surely tell someone else “in confidence.” (Please read between the lines here) Ten minutes later, when everyone knows about “it,” the source (you) will be tracked down like an injured deer.
2. Sending off-color emails to your office buddy. Trust me, these rarely make it to the recipients little trashcan in Outlook. Remember that vulgar email you sent to your office friend three years ago that was supposedly so hilarious? Yep, he’s still got it, and so does his attorney because he’s filing suit against you, and your company for wrongful termination based on the discriminatory content of that email. That email is now called “Exhibit A.”
3. Getting suckered in. This may sound cynical, but the reason employees may be so friendly towards you is that they are counting on you, as their manager, to get approved for raises and promotions. If, and when the opportunities come and you don’t award them accordingly because they didn’t meet corporate expectations and because someone else is more deserving, watch how quickly that friendship fades away, which brings me to my next point…
4. Promoting someone based on your personal relationship with them or office politics. Even if it’s slightly obvious that you prefer one employee over the others, you need to be very careful about who does, and who does not get awarded a promotion. Employees can pick up on the slightest scent of office friendships and will waste no time criticizing you, and your friend who received the promotion.
5. Lie, fib, or cover up for anyone. If you never lie, you’ll never need to remember what you said.
6. Say things you’ll regret. In the heat of an argument, some people have a habit of using strong language just to make a point, and worse, the argument may turn personal. There’s no reason conflict should ever reach such an altitude ofemotional hijacking. Conflict Resolution is one of the most important skills leaders must practice consistently – it ensures that problems are diffused at the very first indication of a problem instead if waiting for problems to cure themselves, which they never do.
Someone will always be looking to you as an example of how to act. Make sure you don’t let them down. And all too often, office friendships are only as good as the health of the professional relationships between a manager and his employee.
______________________________________________________
9 Hidden Qualities of Stellar Bosses
What your employees see you doing matters. But often it's what they can't see that matters more. Good bosses look good on paper. Great bosses look great in person; their actions show their value. Yet some bosses go even farther. They're remarkable--not because of what you see them do but what you don't see them do.
Where remarkable bosses are concerned, what you see is far from all you get:
They forgive... and they forget.
When an employee makes a mistake--especially a major mistake--it's easy to forever view that employee through the perspective of that mistake.
I know. I've done it.
But one mistake, or one weakness, is just one part of the whole person.
Great bosses are able to step back, set aside a mistake, and think about the whole employee.
Remarkable bosses are also able to forget that mistake, because they know that viewing any employee through the lens of one incident may forever impact how they treat that employee.
And they know the employee will be able to tell.
To forgive may be divine, but to forget can be even more divine.
They transform company goals into the employees' personal goals.
Great bosses inspire their employees to achieve company goals.
Remarkable bosses make their employees feel that what they do will benefit them as much as it does the company. After all, whom will you work harder for: A company or yourself?
Whether they get professional development, an opportunity to grow, a chance to shine, a chance to flex their favorite business muscles, employees who feel a sense of personal purpose almost always outperform employees who feel a sense of company purpose.
And they have a lot more fun doing it.
Remarkable bosses know their employees well enough to tap the personal, not just the professional.
They look past the action to the emotion and motivation.
Sometimes employees make mistakes or simply do the wrong thing. Sometimes they take over projects or roles without approval or justification. Sometimes they jockey for position, play political games, or ignore company objectives in pursuit of personal goals.
When that happens it's easy to assume they don't listen or don't care. But almost always there's a deeper reason: They feel stifled, they feel they have no control, they feel marginalized or frustrated--or maybe they are just trying to find a sense of meaning in their work that pay rates and titles can never provide.
Effective bosses deal with actions. Remarkable bosses search for the underlying issues that, when overcome, lead to much bigger change for the better.
They support without seeking credit.
A customer is upset. A vendor feels shortchanged. A coworker is frustrated. Whatever the issue, good bosses support their employees. They know that to do otherwise undermines the employee's credibility and possibly authority.
Afterword, most bosses will say to the employee, "Listen, I took up for you, but..."
Remarkable bosses don't say anything. They feel supporting their employees--even if that shines a negative spotlight on themselves--is the right thing to do and is therefore unremarkable.
Even though we all know it isn't.
They make fewer public decisions.
When a decision needs to be made, most of the time the best person to make that decision isn't the boss. Most of the time the best person is the employee closest to the issue.
Decisiveness is a quality of a good boss. Remarkable bosses can be decisive but often in a different way: They decide they aren't the right person and then decide who is the right person.
They do it not because they don't want to avoid making those decisions but because they know they shouldn't make those decisions.
They don't see control as a reward.
Many people desperately want to be the boss so they can finally call the shots.
Remarkable bosses don't care about control. As a result they aren't seen to exercise control.
They're seen as a person who helps.
They allow employees to learn their own lessons.
It's easy for a boss to debrief an employee and turn a teachable moment into a lesson learned.
It's a lot harder to let employees learn their own lessons, even though the lessons we learn on our own are the lessons we remember forever.
Remarkable bosses don't scold or dictate; they work together with an employee to figure out what happened and what to do to correct the mistake.
They help find a better way, not a disciplinary way.
Great employees don't need to be scolded or reprimanded. They know what they did wrong.
Sometimes staying silent is the best way to ensure they remember.
They let employees have the ideas.
Years ago I worked in manufacturing and my boss sent me to help move the production control offices. It was basically manual labor, but for two days it put me in a position to watch and hear and learn a lot about how the plant's production flow was controlled.
I found it fascinating and later I asked my boss if I could be trained to fill in as a production clerk. Those two days sparked a lifelong interest in productivity and process improvement.
Years later he admitted he sent me to help move their furniture. "I knew you'd go in there with your eyes wide open," he said, "and once you got a little taste I knew you'd love it."
Remarkable bosses see the potential in their employees and find ways to let them have the ideas, even though the outcome was what they intended all along.
They always go home feeling they could have done better.
Leadership is like a smorgasbord of insecurity. Bosses worry about employees and customers and results. You name it, they worry about it.
That's why remarkable bosses go home every day feeling they could have done things a little better or smarter. They wish they had treated employees with a little more sensitivity or empathy.
Most importantly, they always go home feeling they could have done more to fulfill the trust their employees place in them.
And that's why, although you can't see it, when they walk in the door every day remarkable bosses make a silent commitment to do their jobs even better than they did yesterday.
And then they do.