Anatomy of a manager
The bias of power, the paradox of trust and the importance of good quality feedback
Guys, come on, we need to start this conversation. There is a massive elephant in the office. And I said office because in this article we are starting by talking about managers and how we feel about them.
Don’t panic. I’m not asking. You are not getting fired today. It only took a quick google search to see how we truly feel. Seeing these results is quite alarming because a manager should be someone we could trust and by the look of this, it is obvious we don’t. But, why is that? Are managers that bad? What’s the problem behind all this?
I want to share with you some of the findings I discovered while I did my research on this topic so we could throw some light on why this happens.
Bad managers are not bad people
Allegedly, we all know there are some bad apples out there, but most managers are good people. It’s the work culture what corrupts their good intentions.
Samuel A. Culbert in his book “Good people, bad managers”, says that workplace culture is negative and that is so normalized we don’t even realize how problematic it is. Managers act the way they act not because they are evil monsters but because they put to use all the wrong habits and poor management skills this toxic workplace culture has taught them.
Bad management is the rule, not the exception.
— Samuel A. Culbert
Does this excuse managers for their bad managing? Not at all, but it is a way to start addressing the situation and let managers know that the voice in their head saying “this way of doing things doesn’t feel right” it’s a good sign.
The bias of power and knowledge
The workplace culture not only affects managers and their ways. It also affects the idea we have about the role. This archaic conception of management roles is based on power, hierarchy and knowledge because traditionally it was. Nowadays we cannot keep thinking about management roles in the same way.
The corporate world is not as pyramidal as it once was and the role of the manager has shifted. Thinking about managers as power-holders is very outdated and we do this all the time. When we form relationships in our workplace it is very likely that the people we are closer with are those who hold similar positions to ours. This not only happens because we can relate to them but also because we see them as equals. There is still an imaginary hierarchy, a legacy of this outdated workplace culture, that is hurting manager-report relationships. We are afraid to form relationships with those above or below this absurd corporate ladder and the result is a lack of trust in our colleagues.
A healthier approach to understanding the role of the manager is by disassociating it to power and start associating it with responsibility. A manager is someone who has more responsibilities, not more power.
Also, thinking about managers as knowledge-holders isn’t the way to go. There is this myth out there that says managers need to know more than those who report to them. This could be true in many cases — because managers usually have more work experience — , but shouldn’t be the norm. With job specialization, this has become harder and harder because managers cannot have deep knowledge in all areas. The work of the manager is knowing how to manage, and that involves a variety of skills that go further than having technical skills.
My colleague Leo looks into these different types of knowledge in his article “The myth of the manager that needs to know it all”.
The paradox of trust
Trust. What a big word. In my opinion, the foundation of any strong relationship. The thing with trust is that is something very tricky because it comes with a paradox:
“You cannot trust someone you don’t know and, you cannot begin to know someone unless you trust them.”
So, how do we function? how do we trust people or get to know them?
We have to be willing to take risks. At the end of the day, trust is a process, not a goal to fulfill. It requires consistency.
In the workplace environment, trust is as important as it is in your private life. You need to form strong relationships with your colleagues and for that, you need to trust them. This toxic workplace culture I previously mentioned harms these relationships for different reasons:
The bias of power and their relationship with trust
If you think about report-report relationships or manager-manager relationships, they work out more organically. The reason why this happens it’s not only because people relate more with those who hold similar positions, but also because as a result of this workplace culture, we have a mindset that hurts manager-reports relationships.
Workplace culture is based on hierarchy and, without even noticing it, we interact with our colleagues respecting that structure. As humans, we tend to form relationships with people that we perceive to be on our level, that we consider equals, so when a manager interacts with a report and vice versa they do it differently because we perceive that certain interactions defy this hierarchy and we don’t want to cross the line.
Only by approaching our managers/reports as people and not job positions could we tear down those invisible walls between us.
Authenticity clashes with perfection
There is a very important aspect in the process of building trust and that is authenticity. People are more likely to trust genuine people. The issue here is that workplace culture rewards deceit, not authenticity. As Culbert says in his book “…this toxic culture breeds pretense, frowns on dissent, and expects perfection from employees”.
That’s the main issue here. Human beings are imperfect and we try to survive in an environment that does not contemplate imperfection so, as a consequence of this, we lose our authenticity. We play our parts expecting our covers are not compromised. We feel we need to be perfect in all we do, that we will be punished if we are not. That’s why we undertake actions such as making promises we are unable to keep, avoiding the responsibility of our own mistakes, being incapable to say “no” or hiding our feelings.
We need to battle this by having room for imperfection, dropping the mask, knowing that we make mistakes and so does our team. In this way, we can learn to be honest, say “no” and share our worries and opinions. Only by doing so could we be genuine and start building trust.
In “From the role of the manager to the authentic manager”, my colleague Sandra reflects about authenticity, empathy and emotions in the workplace.
The importance of good quality feedback
When we work with teams, feedback is really important to grow as professionals because it allows people to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and work on them. It improves our work and ourselves.
But gathering good quality feedback requires honesty and earning it is not as easy as it may seem.
Honesty is something that only people who truly trust you will give you. Workplace culture hinders building trust but we need to fight the monster to achieve this. Because when you build healthy and trustful relationships people don’t hesitate to speak their minds, even in difficult times.
Also, as I mentioned before, workplace culture does not reward imperfection so we try to act like we are perfect. This “performance” affects how people perceive us. Since perfection does not exist we come off as fake. People don’t trust unauthentic people, hence they are not honest with you when you ask them for feedback.
To gather good quality feedback is imperative that we fight workplace culture and its demons. We need that people in our teams share their opinions and feelings about the work we do but the only way for this information to be valuable is to be as honest and transparent as we could. When team relationships are built on trust, communication is straightforward and criticism, constructive, it is a win-win for everybody.
Wrapping up
Workplace culture is changing, it needs to. But there are still some remnants we need to fight in order to succeed. Companies are driven by people so it is really important that we focus our efforts in putting the human factor first, since it’s their work, passion and abilities what make businesses grow.
Aspects such as trust and honesty are imperative in order to have cohesive teams, because only by promoting these values could we learn, grow and deliver the best results for our clients.
The role of the manager takes a big part in changing the paradigm because at the end of the day, the role relies on managing people. Managers have to be aware of the situation and fight it by applying all the good practices that promote transparency, trust-building and a healthy team work environment.
