Getting Along With Your Manager, Part One
About a decade ago, in a story about workplace kindness, called The Wisdom of Thoughtfulness, I quoted Marcus Buckingham, then a senior management consultant at The Gallup Organization who said, “People join companies and leave managers.” He found that most workers rate having a caring boss even higher than they value money or fringe benefits.
It seems several years later managers still had not gotten the message. In 2007, a Florida State University study showed that bosses can resort to some pretty offensive behavior. At the time employees said nearly 1/3 of bosses give their subordinates the silent treatment, nearly 40% fail to give proper credit, just over 25% noted their supervisors made negative comments about them to other employees or managers, and just shy of 25% said their supervisors invade their privacy and blamed others to cover up mistakes or minimize embarrassment.
More recently, a Right Management survey found full 20% of employees rate their manager as incompetent, although one wonders how those same employees were rated by their managers.
Apparently there’s lots of room for improvement in the manager/employee relationship. And in a new book, Bruce Tulgan says, “It’s Okay to Manage Your Boss.” Recently we sat down with Bruce to ask him to ask him how to start. He shares his insights in an upcoming post.
Tags: employee attitudes, managers
The Organization Man, “The Sequel”
William H. Whyte Jr.’s The Organization Man was a seminal work of the 1950’s .The book detailed what Mr. Whyte believed was the sacrifice of a generation in exchange for finding and keeping jobs that promised security. That generation came of age in the “Great Depression.”
Are we on track for The Organization Man, “The Sequel?” In their Global Workforce Study released today Towers Watson, a human capital firm, showed a workforce weary of the fallout from the recession. And, perhaps not surprisingly, there is a renewed interest in job security. When respondents were asked about the factors most important in a preferred work situation, 86% chose a secure and stable position. Fewer, 74%, chose substantially higher levels of compensation.
Has the pendulum swung away from the idea Daniel H. Pink, author of the recently released Drive, first popularized in Free Agent Nation? Said Laura Sejen, a leader of the company’s Talent and Rewards business, “Where once employers fretted over a ‘war for talent,’ now they must plan for a workforce that appears ready to settle in for years—perhaps even decades.”,
What will this mean for those joining the workforce in coming years, and folks who are delaying retirement? Share your thoughts!
Tags: Daniel H. Pink, employee attitudes, free agent nation, job security, organization man, recession, war for talent, William H. Whyte Jr., workplace trends
