Isn’t it Time We Rid Ourselves of “Dumb @ss” Management Behavior?

“The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons” (Exodus 20:5)

This year, the year before this, next year and the year following next year there will be innumerable gatherings of professionals in conference after conference addressing practices to elevate employee engagement. HR pro’s will talk to each other. Engagement pro’s will talk to each other. Labor and OD the same…and while they are all away they’ll get a report that some manager back home pulled off a spectacular demonstration of “Dumb @ss1behavior that will set back everything they have been working hard to achieve.

I can hear us all now as we gather…

“Can you believe it?”

“What was she thinking?”

“And he was supposed to be one of our best!”

“Wait til you hear this; you are not going to believe it!”

“Well, at least we’ve got job security, cleaning up these messes!”

When I first joined “corporate America” in early 1973 I was a pretty naïve guy with a Master’s in Labor Relations fresh from Michigan State. Arriving in New Jersey, employed as an HR Generalist in a mid-sized refinery where our plant employees were represented by the Teamsters, I was finally ready to join that big “team” I knew was waiting for me out there. Let’s just say that the awakening I experienced was RUDE!

Turns out it wasn’t one big team and we didn’t play together all that well. If that wasn’t a sufficient disappointment, I was regularly treated to displays of “Dumb @ss” behavior on the part of managers and unfortunately some of the worst offenders were the very senior people.

Thirty seven years later I continue to hear reports of the same behaviors I encountered “back in the day.” The examples I refer to are not exotic, they are ones we all know: rating all employees in a merit pool as Above Average so everyone is eligible for an increase, changing a performance review written by a subordinate manager because you don’t agree with their appraisal, producing ‘Satisfactory’ or better performance reviews for employees who everyone knows are sub-par, transferring sub-par employees without dealing with performance issues, etc..

The truth is, when it comes to managing people there really isn’t that much new under the sun. There are just repeat offenses and often by repeat offenders. It is this habitual pattern of our tolerance for repeat offenses and the offenders which I want us to consider.

Allow me to re-introduce you to a couple of colleagues I hold in high regard, Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden. These two author/speaker/consultants wrote what I believe is a seminal work on employee engagement ‘Contented Cows Give Better Milk’ in 2000. They are engagement pioneers.

Bill Catlette regularly publishes a very down-to-earth monthly newsletter titled ‘Fresh Milk.’ This past week he included a piece on managers being mindful of the difference between authority they have and the wisdom of using it just because they have it. In the midst of his counsel he offered this bit of wisdom, “…we have yet to see, for example, a bullying or self-absorbed boss get more Discretionary Effort from a worker than a caring, authentic leader.” Later in the piece Bill reminds us, “With things like institutional loyalty and job security off the table, today’s workers make frequent, rapid fire “worth-its” decisions in which they decide whether or not to give their manager or the organization the benefit of the doubt, and a morsel of their Discretionary Effort.” The full post itself is concerned with responding to a question from a reader on whether it is legal for a manager to arbitrarily change a work schedule. Bill responds in his usual thoughtful manner, not just to the reader’s question but to the larger issue and lesson available in the background.

The ground Bill did not cover but might have if the question were asked differently was this; where were this manager’s peers and superior in the midst of this situation? Without regard to either the “rightness” or righteousness of this manager’s actions, were they called into question by anyone at the same level? All too often as managers ourselves we witness behavior that at first glance smacks of the “Dumb @ss” and we allow it to pass unchallenged for whatever “Dumb @ss” reason we have. We even aid and abet the “Dumb @ss” behavior before it happens by allowing people we know to be mighty capable of @asshole2 behavior to be selected as managers in the first place.        

[ 1&2  The term “Dumb @ss”  used when referring to behavior is a derived from the terrific work Dr. Bob Sutton has done in alerting us to beware of @ssholes in our midst. His blog, Work Matters, is among my favorites. ]

There is no technique or practice in any book or at any conference that will rid us of the damages done by behavior that is thoughtless on a manager’s part. And such behavior will continue as long as we tolerate 1) the elevation of inappropriate people to positions of authority 2) failure to properly orient and support new managers and 3) standing by and watching as our peers or even superiors “act out” patterns of personal behavior that are obviously misaligned with best interests of either company or employees simply to serve personal gratification.

  • Where do you currently see an opportunity to intervene with another manager and you’ve been putting it off for some “Dumb @ss” reason?

 

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