The queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, wasn’t singing about managers in her song Respect. But the lyrics, “You need me and I need you,” can clearly be applied to management. How so you ask? Managers need their employees. We need our employees to do their jobs and to be innovative and motivated. The employees need to be motivated and that’s where the employees need the manager. Managers need to motivate their employees. Respect works in motivating employees. I respect my…
I was on my way to my manager’s office and noticed her door was open. As I came up to the door, I realized she was on the phone and heard her mention my name. She was telling the person on the phone about how she had told me to implement HER idea – the one that was really MY idea. I was angry so I went to her door and cleared my throat. She looked up in surprise and quickly…
As a newly minted first line manager, I was eager to help my team. As I met with each person on the team, each one explained what he or she was working on. I asked a series of questions. Those questions were usually asked with the unspoken assumption that the employee hadn’t done something or considered something important in doing their job. After all, I was helping! In one of these meetings, an employee said to me, “You know, it…
At a staff meeting, I very enthusiastically shared my great idea to improve productivity. It was such a great idea! I divvied up responsibilities to implement this great idea and left the meeting thinking how brilliant I was. I had recently been promoted to a director level position and I was eager to show what I could do. Now, there are lots of ways to improve productivity. I had ideas, sure. But I failed to realize that my managers and…
“You all are like my children,” my manager said to me. I just stared at him. I was offended on so many levels. I was NOT his child in any sense of the word. However, as this was my first professional job, I didn’t say anything in response though I could feel my body constricting in anger. He then went on to elaborate just why he thought his direct reports were like his children: We didn’t always agree, some team…