I/O psychology Question
COVER PACKAGE ORGANIZATIONAL & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
26 HR Magazine August 2014
IL LU
S T
R A
T IO
N S
B Y
D A
V E
A R
K LE
F O
R H
R M
A G
A Z
IN E
Can they be fixed? By Dori Meinert
BAD 1″|TI
However, her peaceful morning and professional demeanor were shaken when her manager arrived an hour later—in a foul mood. In a loud voice, the manager demanded to know why patients were sit ting in the waiting room. Tina, a soft-spoken woman whose name has been changed for this article because she feared she would lose her job, explained that there were only two medical assistants on duty that morning to check in patients.
That was enough to set off the manager, who saw the explana tion as a criticism of her scheduling skills. Instead of pitching in to
A u g u s t 2 0 1 4 HR Magazine 27
COVER PACKAGE ORGANIZATIONAL & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
help, the manager towered over the short assistant in an intimidating fashion, shout ing insults at Tina in front of the waiting patients.
“I was in shock,” Tina says. “I was scared. I was so shaken I went home for the rest of the day.” She dreaded going back to the office the next morning, but she needed the paycheck.
“I have lost my ability to concentrate,” says Tina, who was still upset weeks later. “The quality of my w ork has suffered because I’m so stressed all the time.”
She says she is trying to stay out of the manager’s way until she can land a new job.
Nearly everyone has a story about a bad boss. The emotions that bad manag ers generate can take a significant toll. A bad boss can cause employee stress, low morale, anger and long-term health prob lems, all of which in turn can cost the com pany in higher absences, increased tu rn over and lower productivity. In fact, in 2008 a 10-year Swedish study concluded that men with the worst bosses suffered more heart attacks than those with the best ones.
Given the negative impact that prob lem managers can have on the workforce, we asked experts to identify five common types of bad bosses and suggest ways to improve their behavior.
T ina’s boss is a classic bully boss. Bully bosses use intimidation and public humili ation to keep their employees on task, not realizing that their behavior often has the opposite effect.
“An outright bad m anager is some one who, in my opinion, abuses his or her power and authority and intimidates employees,” says Ronald Pilenzo, SPHR, president of The Global H R Consultancy, who has worked in five major U.S. cor porations over his 50-year career in HR. He is a past president of the Society for Human Resource Management.
Pilenzo recalls a manager in a W ash ington, D.C., office who frequently used foul language and shouted at his employ ees in public.
“His outbursts were heard th rough out the office, and he was also known to ham m er his fists on tables and walls when berating his staff,” Pilenzo recalls. “Under normal circumstances, he would have been terminated.”
But the manager was key to the com pany’s government services division, and company leaders feared that his departure would deal a serious financial blow.
Over six months, an H R professional met with the manager and tried unsuccess fully to find out why he was erupting in this hostile manner. Senior management
THE HIGH
OF A BAD
C D S !
Replacing a low-performing boss with a
high-performing one is equivalent to adding
one more worker to a nine-member team, according to a 2012
study by the National Bureau
of Economic Research.
Managers account for at least
70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.
The disengagement caused by bad managers costs U.S. businesses up to
$450 billion a year, according to Gallup.
Only 30% of U.S. workers are engaged at work, according to
2012 Gallup studies.
When employees have had a bad manager,
their performance can suffer for up to
five years, according to the Corporate Executive Board.
28 HR Magazine A ugust 2014
also talked with him. Pilenzo, as an out side HR consultant, suggested hiring a psychologist to work with the individual.
“HR should be the catalyst for solv ing problems but be wise enough to learn when to ask for help,” he advises.
Ultimately, the manager didn’t change his behavior and was let go.
At other companies, removing an abu sive manager can be next to impossible. Leili Eghbal, HR director for the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Chrysalis, which helps low-income and homeless people find work, says one employee frequently comes to her in tears because of the way her manager treats her.
Eghbal informed the manager’s boss, but nothing was done because the man ager is considered too valuable to the busi ness. “I think it sends a very bad message,” Eghbal says. “It sends a message that we don’t value our people.”
To those managers who are open to improving, online assessments and 360-degree evaluations can help pinpoint weaknesses in their management style, says Ron Lippock, who heads the man agement community of practice at the Association for Talent Development (for merly the American Society for Training & Development).
“Oftentimes, the manager doesn’t have any idea how they are coming across,” Lippock says.
HR professionals can be helpful in describing to managers why they will ben efit from training in areas they need help with, explaining that “if your employ ees leave or are less productive, it’s going to reflect poorly on you,” he says. Good managers are willing to work on their weaknesses for the sake of their employ ees and their organizations, he says.
I% WEB EXTRAS
For links to a SHRM video on bully bosses and related articles and studies, see the online version of this article at www.shrm. ora/0814-bad-bosses.
No matter how talented the team, the micromanager boss hovers to ensure that every detail is done the way he or she would do it, which can be demoralizing.
Debbie Mencke, administration man ager at Old Republic National Title Insur ance Co. in Akron, Ohio, said she hired a talented employee who complained that his last boss made him feel that he wasn’t to be trusted.
“His boss would be constantly on his back, telling him what to do and when to do it,” Mencke says.
The employee said he felt like he was back in college, working his first job.
A good manager should be like a first- base coach in baseball, the employee told her. “If the coach stands in the way, you’ll never be able to get to first base. But he also needs to guide you and inform you of situations because without him you wouldn’t know if you should run to sec ond base or stay on first,” she recalls him saying.
While working in HR for a large auto company, Pilenzo once challenged a man ager after discovering him working on an engineering problem. “We pay you to supervise and manage a large department of expensive engineering personnel” and not to duplicate their work, Pilenzo chided him. He further joked that the company
should deduct the time and pay from the manager’s paycheck. “He laughed but got the point,” he says.
In such circumstances, it helps for HR to have a positive relationship with man agers before such occasions arise so man agers will be more open to suggestions. Such a relationship allowed Pilenzo to remind the manager at the auto company that his employees could feel insecure and offended when their boss takes over a project that was assigned to them.
“Managers also have the responsibil ity to develop their subordinates. If they
BACKGROUND
ON BOSSES m—maQ
Companies fail to choose the right
candidate for managerial positions
82% of the time, says James Flarter, Gallup’s chief scientist for
workplace management.
More than one-fourth of managers said they weren’t
ready to lead when they began
managing others, according to a 2011
CareerBuilder survey.
58% of managers said they didn’t receive any management training, the
CareerBuilder survey found.
The average manager today has
seven direct reports, compared to five before the recession, and is spending 5% less time with employees, according to Brian Kropp,
executive director for the Corporate
Executive Board’s HR practice.
August 2014 HR Magazine 29
COVER PACKAGE ORGANIZATIONAL & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
over-manage, employees cannot and will not grow personally and professionally,” he says.
Role-playing exercises led by or set up by H R might help a micromanager under stand the impact of his or her actions on subordinates, Lippock says.
However, H R may not always be able to achieve lasting change.
“M anagers and executives who con tinually become involved in the day-to- day duties of their employees are uncon sciously or otherwise trying to prove to their subordinates and others tha t they ‘still have it’ and that they are as good as or better than their staffs,” Pilenzo says.
“This need is sometimes reinforced by upper management, whoalsomaybe micro- managing or expect that all senior manag ers be ‘involved’ in the areas of their assign ment,” he says. “In short, unless the bosses of the problem boss hold their subordinates responsible for managing and not doing, HR will lose this struggle every time.”
W orkaholic bosses are the ones w ho e-mail their staff at 3 a.m. and expect an immediate response. They frequently dole out last-minute assignments and expect staff to drop everything and stay late to complete them.
W hen M ichael E sposito , SPH R,
Helping Managers to Help Themselves When an HR professional tells a man ager what to do, the manager often gets defensive and stubbornly resists change.
So HR professionals at some compa nies are taking a more indirect approach to addressing bad managerial behaviors. Instead of delivering lectures, they raise questions to encourage managers to dis cover how others interpret their actions. HR professionals or outside consultants help managers understand the impact they have on others.
“You learn a whole lot more when you uncover something rather than when someone tells you something,” says Brian Kropp, executive director for the Corporate Executive Board’s HR practice. “When you discover it for your self, a light bulb goes off and you behave differently.”
In another self-discovery approach,
Michael Esposito, SPHR, employee rela tions director for Novell’s North America, suggests celebrating positive leader behaviors.
“In your journey to find the right but tons to press that might help the chal lenged leader improve, consider shout ing out to those leaders who get it,” he says. “Most leaders are competitive and will do whatever they need to do to win. If someone else is getting the Core Values Leadership Award, and the award is considered something special, that may do the trick.”
Communication is key to capturing a problem manager’s attention and being taken seriously. An indirect, non- confrontational approach works best, says psychiatrist Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
employee relations director for Novelis N o rth Am erica, an alum inum m anu facturer based in Atlanta, received com plain ts abou t a senior executive who e-mailed his staff late at night, he had a conversation with the individual and found out he’s a night owl. The execu tive said it was easier for him to send an e-mail late at night after the kids were in bed, and he wanted to get it done before he forgot. Esposito advised him to com municate that to his staff, telling them, “I don’t expect a response. If I really need you, I’ll call you.”
“The challenge is the people on the receiving end,” Esposito explains. “Do they really believe it’s OK to not respond?”
In most cases, if a manager regularly requires staff to work around the clock, “tha t would be wildly inappropriate,” Esposito says. “Then you need an inter vention at some time, a conversation lay ing down the ground rules.”
L ip p o c k ad v ises e x p la in in g to
(AMACOM, 2009). He often begins with flattery: “When
someone has a gift like you do, you owe it to yourself not to do anything that dis tracts from it.” Then he suggests how the manager could achieve even more.
Too often, HR professionals are cut out of decisions about what to do with problem managers, or they’re brought in only during the termination process to ensure that legal requirements are met, says Ronald Pilenzo, SPHR, president of The Global HR Consultancy.
HR can get in front of the problem by bringing hard facts and data on the costs of poor managers to business leaders.
“The more HR can teach other peo ple, the better the organization is going to be,” Pilenzo says.
That’s the kind of positive change every business can profit from.
30 HR Magazine August 2014
COVER PACKAGE ORGANIZATIONAL & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
managers that “the more they try to pull out of their employees, the less effective they’ll be in the long run because they’ll burn out and become disengaged.” Man agers may be too focused on the next quarter’s results to pay much attention to staff needs. But HR professionals might gain traction when they show such man agers how much it costs to recruit, inter view and train new employees because of the department’s high turnover rate.
The By-the-Num bers Boss
The opposite of a micromanager, the num- bers-focused boss sits behind closed doors poring over reports and analytics while his or her staff drifts without direction.
This detached manager might try to be a good boss but doesn’t have the peo ple skills to motivate and lead the team, says Don Johnson, who conducts train ing and staff development programs for the Washoe Tribe Native TANF Program of Nevada and California.
“While this method might be OK for top performers who need minimal coach ing, it won’t be good for those who need the most support,” Johnson says.
Often, such a boss relinquishes power because of his or her inability to connect with subordinates. Others on the team take on informal leadership roles, which can generate resentment, Johnson notes.
Such managers may be introverts or
insecure in their leadership skills, so they focus on the numbers because that’s what they feel comfortable with.
In a previous job, Erin Huett, SPHR, HR generalist for the City of Richmond Heights, Mo., encountered such a man ager in a branch office where turnover was high. She pulled out black-and-white reports to show him how much the turn over was costing.
“It was enough to make him under stand how much of an impact the soft skills he was lacking was costing his branch,” Huett says.
Training this type of boss is only effec tive if the manager practices his or her new knowledge in the workplace. “Unfortu nately, the personality of the numbers manager is very cerebral,” Johnson says, “and it may be very hard for him to apply what he’s learned.”
Also, frequently, “those who need the training most are the ones who don’t go,” Johnson notes.
Esposito says that, without course cor rection, the numbers-focused manager’s team will deteriorate.
In an effort to prevent this, the HR team can search for an outside consu ltant, coach or mentor who can help round out the indi- vidual’s management skills. Whether the company pays for the coach depends on how much the manager is valued by the organization, Esposito says.
The numbers-focused manager might also be called “the reluctant manager,” Pilenzo says.
He recounts how a former employer spent a significant amount of money to send a senior financial expert to a week- long leadership development program after the manager’s staff complained that his office door was always closed and that they were shut off from com municating with him.
In the program, he was assessed by organizational psychologists and given a two-year plan designed to prepare him for advancement. Soon after, he resigned to take a job elsewhere.
Lesson learned: Talk to managers to find out whether their desires mesh with senior executives’ plans for the future.
The divisive boss plays favorites. “Divide and conquer” describes his or her manage ment style.
If this manager was promoted from within the team, he or she still goes out to lunch with old friends on the team, excluding others.
Unfortunately, the divisive manager appears to be all too common.
Playing favorites is a top employee complaint about bosses, according to a 2011 survey conducted for CareerBuilder .com.
“It’s really a personality thing. You know that person in high school who was very cliquish, who wanted to be part of the ‘in’ crowd?” asks Brian Kropp, execu tive director for the Corporate Executive Board’s HR practice. “They don’t change their behaviors when they become a man ager of a team.”
The best way to resolve the problem is to assign the manager to lead another team, preferably one he or she wasn’t a part of before, Kropp says. D3
Dori Meinert is a senior writer for HR Magazine.
32 HR Magazine August 2014
Copyright of HR Magazine is the property of Society for Human Resource Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
