Great leaders are rare, but being an effective boss is simple enough if you follow the rules
A few years ago, back when we were writing our first book together, my wife and I hit a real roadblock while discussing the section that was to cover "managing" a lousy boss. One of us thought a few paragraphs would do. Bad bosses are few and far between, went the case, because their organisations tend to toss them out in due course. The other insisted that bad bosses—people who manipulate, confuse, and even torment employees—were much more prevalent and deserved more ink.
Unable to agree, we decided to put the question to a group of 20-odd friends we were going to see at a party that night. Guess which point of view prevailed? Yes, virtually every one of our friends had a story about a close encounter with a manager (or two or three) who had disappointed them in some way.One friend described a boss who never said what she was really thinking. Another recalled a boss who made an art form of belittling employees in meetings.
How do you tell a good boss from a bad one? The great from the average? We know from experience that a great boss can change your life, inspiring employees to reach new heights both professionally and personally, and energising teams to overcome challenges that would be insurmountable without strong leadership. But what is the very least we should expect of our leaders?
1. It's reasonable to expect a boss to provide two candid performance appraisals a year that make it absolutely clear how employees are doing relative to their peers and in terms of their ambitions. A good boss may galvanise the team to deliver stellar results. But no boss is doing his job properly if he's not letting each of his people know where they stand, and in meaningful, constructive detail. So even if staff would rather live without frank, biannual evaluations of their performance—and admittedly, the idea does makes some people uncomfortable—they are well within their rights to ask for them.
2. It's reasonable to expect a boss to avoid playing favourites. Very few things have the power to enervate an organisation like a boss who has an in-crowd and an out-crowd like one of the "mean girls" in middle school. This invariably spawns politicking among colleagues who need to trust each other in order to share information, generate ideas or simply get anything done.
3. It's reasonable to expect the boss to stand by employees in their hour of need. We have a friend we'll call Carol, whose boss once asked her to present a proposal at a meeting with the organisation's executive team. Carol dutifully complied, but when the executives balked at the proposal, so did Carol's boss, throwing up her hands as though it annoyed her no end. Such "I don't know you" behaviour is the hallmark of a manager who feels that his position is vulnerable—or a manager who is just a plain jerk.
4. It's reasonable to expect a good leader to deliver outsized rewards for outsized performance. We realise that it may sound crazy to talk about "outsized" compensation in recessionary times like these. But an effective boss understands how important—and how motivating—this differentiation is, and very good bosses refuse to resort to the old line others haul out during a downturn: "You were terrific, but this is all I could get for you from upstairs."
5. Finally, and certainly most important, it's reasonable to expect the boss to demonstrate integrity. It's awful to go to work each day wondering whether your boss is shading the truth, adding spin to his real beliefs or violating company values. If your employees feel a boss's integrity ebbing, they may ask themselves whether it's time to move on.
Posted 9 March 2009 : Director.co.uk
