Some years ago, after recently taking a new job, I experienced the creepiness, anger, and all together bad feeling of being Boss Stalked. As I sat outside with my kids watching them swim one Sunday afternoon, my cell phone rang, my blackberry buzzed with a new message, and my home phone rang, all within 3 minutes. Had it been a simple email asking me to call when I had a chance and apologizing for interrupting my Sunday, I probably would have gladly taken the time to call. But after reading the email and listening to the voicemails that demanded I call to discuss something that I knew could easily wait until Monday morning, I decided to ignore them all. Perhaps not a great decision, but I was angry. Angry that this person felt that he should have that kind of control over my life. It was bad enough that he clearly monitored the times at which I arrived and left the office every day, but now he was trying to control my weekends too. Back then I didn’t see my two little girls much during the week, so weekends were quite sacred to me.
Back at the office Monday morning, I received a harsh talking to from my boss letting me know that his expectation was that I respond to him within 5 minutes no matter what day or time he tries to get a hold of me. Wow, I thought, he really believes that is the best way to “make” me work harder and be more dedicated to my job. The reality is, that he could not be more wrong about what it takes to motivate me, and most people.
I knew that the issue at hand was not my work ethic. After all, the last job I had (for over 11 years) was full of examples of working long and hard hours. One Summer I even commuted to Germany when my youngest daughter was just 1 year old. I had spent many Thanksgivings working in foreign countries and many early mornings on the phone accommodating large time zone differences. I loved working hard and going the extra mile, as long as there was something worthwhile to do and great people to do it with.
So what was the difference? The difference was that at one job I was given my tasks and allowed to prioritize my work time as I saw fit. We all did, and we all supported each other when we needed to be somewhere else. Families were important to all of us, and we all did everything we could to maximize our home time while still giving 110% to our work. In the other job, someone was trying to control my every move, second-guessing every decision I made regarding my time, because they didn’t trust that I would not try to take advantage of the company. The result was that for the first firm I would have done absolutely anything no matter what was asked. They trusted me with a lot and they gave me the freedom to do things my way. The second firm, I was looking for any excuse to get out of there from the moment I arrived each morning. I wasn’t trying to get out of work, I just longed for a job where I wanted to work long and hard hours to create something meaningful. Because I believe in doing your best, even in the worst of circumstances, it took some very, very deep digging to muster up enough good feelings to convince myself that my boss was doing the best that he knew how to do, and my best bet was to be a good example. I don’t think he had ever experienced how good a working relationship could be. Often times I would pretend he was my old boss, just to get through the day!
I was always amazed that a boss could entrust an employee to make a $10 million decision one minute and then the next minute require that they ask permission before taking a few hours off to deal with an urgent personal item. I don’t think I am the only one that sees this as incongruent. I think it doesn’t make sense to a lot of us, and insults the intelligence of millions of people every day. Then, why do we put up with these types of relationships in the workplace year after year? Because that is the way it has been done for years and years and most people don’t consider changing it as even showing up on the list of possibilities.
My example was a bit extreme I know, and most managers don’t go to such lengths to control their employees, but I wanted to make a clear point. Any kind of controlling behavior, even if done with great respect for the employee, is going to cause some amount of resentment. Built up resentment is not going to motivate a person to work harder, smarter, or with more passion. In fact, it will have the opposite affect.
Take some time to look at your organization’s policies and ask yourself what kind of assumptions are being made and what kind of results are being created by policies that attempt to control the will of others. Most policies work under the assumption that if given the chance, most employees will try to get away with as little work as possible and will attempt to get more money for doing less work. In my 20-year career, I have met very few people that think that way. Most employees want to do a good job at work and are very unlikely to make decisions that would jeopardize their careers. If we insert that assumption into our policy manuals, we would likely come up with a lot fewer rules and regulations and find that productivity actually increases as constraints are removed.
Best Buy has received a lot of accolades for ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) implemented at their corporate offices. If you do your best work in the middle of the night from home and like to spend the mornings driving your kids to school and running errands, then you are encouraged to do just that. They no longer even have rules about vacation! As long as you get your work done, nobody really cares.
A bank in New Zealand also recently allowed their Branch Managers to decide what hours their banks would be open instead of conforming to the corporate policy. Because every community is different, the Bank Managers are now able to better serve their customers. Happy customers are generally loyal customers!
And do we have to keep using the term “BOSS”? It reminds me of being a kid and hearing “You are not the BOSS of me!” on the playground. As far as I know, there is no national law requiring use of that term. Can’t we all just be colleagues, no matter what our specific jobs entail?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kathy Robison, Kathy Robison. Kathy Robison said: Does it seem strange that you can make mil $ decisions at work but aren't trusted to prioritize your own day? http://bit.ly/2PpIyw [...]