My friend P sends me this link from the Guardian on the 10 things that bosses hate about their employees. I understand the article is meant as a sort of rejoinder to the usual employee whinings about bosses. But some of it serves to explain just why we hate some bosses !
Some of the points include :
2 .Lack of initiative
“Don’t ask me if you should buy lunch for the client, if the client is coming at noon,” said one infuriated manager. “Call up the client and ask if they want lunch.” Actually that’s not quite what he said: there was a lot more swearing in the original version. Managers absolutely hate being bothered by stuff that really, if you thought about it for even a second, you could work out for yourself. They also hate constant updates and being CCd in on everything. They pay you to do a job – get on with it…
3. Too much initiative
… unless you’re an idiot. A marketing manager for a large educational charity reports that if there’s one thing worse than lack of initiative, it’s completely ignoring instructions to go off and do something else instead. She recently found herself on stage, ready to announce the winner of an award. When the person responsible for counting the votes turned up, he showed off a new, whizzy and completely redundant colour-coded method for counting the votes. Unfortunately, devising the new programme meant he hadn’t actually had time to … count the votes.
This illustrates why you can’t win with certain bosses ! If you don’t do work that they agree with, its basically too less or too much initiative ! Honestly, what this says is that if the results aren’t good, or the boss doesn’t agree with an employee, he/she will trash the person regardless of what actually went wrong. I mean, how many such dolts are there who will actually spend all their time on devising a plan and forget the counting….
5. Disloyalty
Although none of the managers came out and said that they hated their staff for talking over them in meetings, pointing out their errors in public, or preventing the bonus-related project coming in on time, Mann says it’s a major issue. “People used to close ranks, but it doesn’t happen quite as much as it used to,” she says. “Managers usually feel obliged to look after their staff, but if their staff don’t feel the same way, the lack of loyalty is always a problem for the boss.”
I don’t think a boss can demand loyalty. You either command loyalty, or you don’t. You just can’t conjure it up, or make employees think that they “need” to be loyal to you. This reeks of old school mentality where you stayed with a boss for a lifetime and moved up with him. But today, bosses change, subordinates change, companies go through mergers, teams change, roles change. There can be admiration for a mentor, loyalty to a team, but it has to be earned. It is no longer automatic that a person stays loyal to the job or team they are allotted into.
8. Petty lying
Saying that you missed the call because your mobile has run out of power. That you didn’t get the email. That you’ve sent the report but there must be a technical glitch. That the meeting has run over and it’s not worth you coming back to the office. That you’ve lost two big taxi receipts. That you’re working from home today. That you have to go to a funeral, the dentist, the doctor, your mum’s house, your best friend’s cousin’s wedding. Whatever. The biggest insult is that you think they believe you.
Bah. This is precisely why some bosses suck. If you don’t have good measures to track your employee’s performance, you will feel insecure about them going to a funeral, the doctor, their mum’s house or even to their own funeral. And you won’t believe them ofcourse, because, *gawd* they have a life outside work ! How is that possible ! I feel strongly on this – bosses need to evaluate their employees based on what work is being accomplished, not on how else they spend their time, or whether they are working chained to their desk or in their bathrobes at home.
10. Wanting their job
They spend all their time and energy trying to protect you from the higher-uppers, you spend all your energy complaining about them. And then, on top of that, you want their job? Unforgivable.
Ha ! Everyone wants to move up. Thats a fact of life. Bosses – accept it and stop crying. Figure out instead how you can move up yourself. Your name is not inscribed on that chair for eternity.
The rest of it is just about ok, but whoever wrote this expecting to generate sympathy for bosses can rest assured they’re getting none !
