Be the Boss You Want to Have
I nearly walked away from my job this past week.
The challenge is that financially at this point I can’t afford to. So, I know that I have to keep enduring the situation I am in and try and find joy despite the pain.
My pain is not that I have a bad job. I love what I do and love the place where I do it. I love the team that I am privileged to lead and I love the customers I am able to serve.
The pain is that once again I find myself with a disconnected, authoritarian leader. When I first joined this company, my first manager was a person who said often, “things are done my way because I have the bigger title, so just get used to it.” I blamed on “small man complex”, but it didn’t make working under him (and under is exactly what it was) any easier. Especially when one day I told him that his webinar was a complete and total waste of time. After that, he seemed dead set on making my life misery and even on one phone call vowed to “get me fired” before he retired. Fortunately, he retired and took his authoritarian act to another place.
Changing Situations
For a year afterwards, I found myself first with a manager who cared about me, cared about my team and valued my input. He only lasted six months. Word from above was that he took a much better offer. Word from the man himself was that he couldn’t take the top down management and dysfunction of the team he had inherited. The dysfunction was a direct result of his predecessor but everybody saw this man as a sort of demi god. Then for six months after that, I enjoyed the relationships with my co-workers throughout the district we worked in and sought about building deep, lasting, co-valued relationships.
Until one day unannounced, we all received an email blast that we were moving to a new district with a new manager. This came literally four days after the new manager to replace the man I respected had been through and we had found that we were going to be able to work together quite well.
My new manager came for a visit and I knew quite quickly that I had another challenge on my hands. His first declaration was that he saw me more as an outside salesperson instead of a manger and that I should “look into” moving down to this position. He then assumed full control, down to telling us what we would wear on a daily basis and that personal cell phones would never be allowed in any of the work places he supervised. He set down other little dictates, including my favorite one “I am the person who makes all the decisions and you will DO what I say”. Yes, DO was capitalized and in bold print in his email.
He firmly established that he was the authority and that none of us worked with him, only for him.
Success Doesn’t Mean You’ll Be Valued
I naively thought that because of the success my team was having, far more successful than the other teams under this man’s control, that my input and direction setting would be valued.
After nine months of rare communications, no direction being set, authority being wielded and the rare communications merely being to tell us the little things we were doing wrong and why he was the wisest man in the planet I had reached the end of my rope. I sent this person and his number two person an email telling them I was leaving for the day and would try and decide if I wanted to continue in my current role or whether it was time to do something different.
When I got to my house the first thing I did was to collapse in tears. I had never been so broken down in my professional career. It wasn’t because of what this person had done, more what wasn’t being done and the sheer exhaustion I had. Never once have I received a phone call or an email from this person congratulating myself and my team on the year we are having, which is a record year. All I seem to hear, and this may just by my impression, is what we aren’t doing. That gets tiring.
My first phone call was to my wonderful wife to let her know I was home and that I had to sort out whether I wanted to remain with this company, whether I wanted to step down from management or whether I wanted to find another job altogether. That probably wasn’t smart in my current mental condition but the deed was done.
Then I just prayed. I asked God why I seemed to keep getting into work situations where I create an environment for those I am privileged to lead that they work WITH me and not FOR me, but I always seem to attract the managers that are firmly in the “You work FOR me, period!” type of leadership. As I prayed and read my Bible I began to see that God may be telling me something.
Thank God For Good Leadership
To confirm this, I called a really good friend, who just also happened to be one of my former bosses. This man was one of those “work WITH” you guys who valued my input, valued my hard work and rewarded me accordingly. As I explained what was going on, I heard him clear his throat. I knew this was the signal to shut up and listen.
He very calmly said, “1. You’ve never quit anything in your life before. Don’t start now, you’re only at mile six of the marathon. 2. Be the boss you wish you had.”
He then explained both. His summation was that if I quit I would be letting bad management win…again. The world is full of bad managers, people who receive a title because they did something well and then exercise that title over everybody they come in contact. Most of the time, these people remain successful. The challenge is they don’t build people that could replace them someday. Usually when you look at the organization chart of the people they manage they are full of people who have learned that is easier to just say “yes” to everything this person says and just perform the minimum required to receive their pay checks. They aren’t ambitious, aren’t looking to move up and are usually pretty poorly trained. They do their responsibilities okay but rarely extraordinary. The organization chart is full of average people that perform on average but rarely above average. They’re afraid to poke their heads above and be outrageously successful because they have been bopped on the heads too often to stand out as excellent future leaders.
I went back to work. I called the HR department to let them know I was close to leaving and why, more so that when word leaked back up to my current manager and he came down full authority on me at least HR would know my side of the situation. I don’t know how much longer I will be with this company, I hope as long as I choose to be, which would be the full marathon distance. We will see what the future holds.
Whatever the future holds though I know that I am still leading a team and that I need to be the boss they are looking to have. I will continue to try and screen them from the worst of the leader above me and continue to set the direction and pace that we need to be setting so that we not only hit our mutually agreed upon goals but exceed them.
How to BE the Boss You Want to Have
These are the qualities after a weekend of running and praying that I have identified as what I look for in a boss, so therefore they are what I need to continually be.
1. Listen more than you speak.
That seems simple but try it sometime. I, as you can tell if you’ve read this far, am not blessed with not having anything to say. I read a lot and I read from multiple sources at the same time. There are a lot of words in my head. However, one thing I have found that people are looking for from their leaders is somebody that will listen to their ideas, their thoughts and even their complaints and whining. Customers value the same thing. When I am with my team, I strive to listen to them and when they have great ideas we put those ideas into motion and I don’t take credit for their ideas.
2. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
When I was having my extremely bad day, I was waiting for my phone to ring. Even after I returned to work I emailed my boss and let him know that I was back and moving forward. I didn’t get one email asking if I was okay, whether there was anything they could do or just checking to see if I wanted to talk. Of course, I didn’t expect it. Afterall this person doesn’t even know my wife’s name, never once checked in when I had major surgery or even checked to make sure I didn’t need anything during my six-week recovery time. People will walk through walls for you when they know how much you care about them. I know the people on my team. I know what they like to do when they aren’t stuck hanging around me for eight hours a day, I know their families and I show them I appreciate them. Because they know I care about them when I am instructing them on something they are more willing to listen.
3. Set the pace and direction and watch people match you.
I decided when I took over management of this team that I wasn’t going to change anything for the first three months. All I did for the first three months was work at the pace that I would like them to work. I was in early every day and I was always the last one to leave. Anytime a customer came in I was the first to get up and help them with what they needed. I let everybody know that if I didn’t know the answer, and there was a ton I didn’t know, that I would quickly and efficiently get back to them. Soon the entire office was doing the same. Over time our days have gotten busier and busier but we seem to always be one step ahead of the mad rush and able to handle everything thrown at us. The team supports each other and they are learning each position and fill in when needed. They are an incredible group of people and I believe they can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
4. Trust the process and don’t deviate.
As a team we have learned that there is a process. There are many interruptions to the process but if we stay true to what we have decided are is our core tenet, serve our customers and get them in and out quickly, that everything else seems to fall into place. Our corporation has processes, goals and objectives also. We fit those into place as we stick to the process we know will bring us the most success as a team.
5. Try to find joy in the midst of the trials.
Nobody is ever going to work in the perfect place with the perfect co-workers with the perfect renumeration for the tasks you perform. Find joy anyway. I find joy when my customers thank me for helping their projects runs smoothly. I find joy when I find new ways to do my job quicker and more efficiently. I find joy when my co-workers find a sense of purpose in what they are doing and express it to me not only with hard work but even with tiny gestures of gratitude. No day is ever going to run smoothly or perfectly but every day is a great day to be alive.
I sincerely hope I am with this organization for a long time as I find the work enjoyable and fulfilling. I know that I am not always going to have the boss I would like to have but the one thing I know above all else. Every day I can BE the boss I wish I had.
