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Who's Bossing the Bosses?
September 09, 2009
Your company's bosses have a lot to say (and gripe about) regarding the performance of their employees, and maybe even you. But, ironic as it is, maybe they're the ones who could use additional supervision.
Former IBM human resources executive Andrew O'Keeffe says most organizations avoid fixing the biggest internal restraint on their business—lifting the capability of their managers, and holding the managers to account for their people responsibilities.
O'Keeffe, author of the new novel, "The Boss," says company leaders and human resources professionals fail in their employee/employer relationship because they don't recognize the obvious—that it's about addressing "the tough stuff" of bossing the bosses. Many organizations prefer to sweat the small stuff, he says.
"There is a light bulb that needs to be turned on to overcome a fundamental blind spot," says O'Keeffe, who also is a human resources consultant. "We don't realize, or don't acknowledge, that the relationship people have with their boss is emotional. We have attended to the issue of management as though it is rational—it's not. It's emotional. When you ask people about their boss, as I have done, you get an instant emotional reaction—good or bad. I rarely received a neutral response."
"The reason I wrote 'The Boss' as a novel based on true stories is to reveal that the relationship between people and their boss is emotional," he says, "and that the relationship has a major impact on people's spirit and output."
O'Keeffe says companies can systematically lift the quality of managers in their organizations and reduce the negative emotional response and sapping of staff energy by following five simple rules:
• Design a 'doable' job: To enable managers to do their job, their role first needs to be structured so they have a sensible number of people reporting to them. More than nine people get managers into trouble. Moreover, organizations have to articulate clear expectations and define what constitutes success for the manager in the eyes of top management.
• Hire well: Hiring is 90 percent of success, so don't let middle managers appoint lower level managers without review. Use the hiring step to lift the caliber of your managers and ensure they have people skills.
• Give them tools: Provide the managers with practical no-nonsense, and not overly complex, leadership tools (for recruiting staff, orienting staff, planning and reviewing work, conducting developing discussions, and managing pay and rewards).
• Invest in skill development: By definition, most managers are appointed to their roles because of their technical skills. Yet the people dimension of their role is the most complex and unpredictable, and the area they are least prepared for. It is a blissful denial of reality to think managers will be equipped to manage the people dimensions of their role by merely being appointed to their role. There is a desperate need for skilling—of frameworks, ideas, concepts, and practice. When we run leadership programs, managers are appreciative that often for the first time in their life they are given the clues to manage the hardest part of their job.
• Hold managers accountable: Senior leaders need to know the managers who are doing well at their people responsibilities, and those who are not. Moreover, they need to be helpful and push the ones who lag behind. Organizations must implement a feedback loop—such as engagement surveys of staff on their managers, "skip" interviews by senior leaders, and "morale reviews" by HR. The accountability test to a senior leader is: "What would a manager need to do in your organization to be moved out of their manager role?" The answer to this question describes the culture you have established in your organization and the quality of your management.
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