|
blessedinnyc -> RE: People problems (6/10/2009 6:12:02 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: stimulus
For instance, I scheduled a team meeting a week ago. Now, my boss has called a short department meeting at the same time. It's not a meeting that had to be held at this exact time, and it signals that I don't even have enough authority to call a team meeting and it be respected by the department when there is no reason it has to be moved.
I don't think you should read much into this particular event. Your manager doesn't necessarily have to work around your team's schedule. At least, I don't see this always happen where I work. It's a lot easier to reschedule a meeting of three or four people than a meeting across several teams.
quote:
So that's the story. How do I talk to my boss about it and get him to reinforce my role as a supervisor? How do I regain the respect of my employee, leading to a change of his behavior?
One other point of background info is worth noting. My boss, and his boss, continue to speak highly of my work and that of my team. They are pleased with the results I deliver, and so are our clients and stake-holders. I'm not perfect, but I am confident I set a good example with attendance, work ethic, respect for authority, and the like. Where I need to improve is learning how to draw that kind of behavior out of employees and how to handle my boss a little better. I appreciate your input!
Are you happy with your employee's productivity- is he ultimately making your life easier or harder? As a leader, you have one set of goals, but as a pragmatic businessperson, you have another.
At our firm, the rule is very simple. You are a valuable employee if you do good work and make your manager's life easier and display some level of deference to him. If he is doing this and you feel he respects you, it may be wise to just be pragmatic about it.
Let me give you an example. Oftentimes, my job requires me to work 70-80 hours a week or even get paged at 3 AM. Sometimes, this means that I won't be able to get the 8 hours of sleep I need to do a good job if I show up at exactly 9 AM. So I will be 15-30 minutes late if I am paged overnight or stay past 10 PM. My manager has indicated to the general group that he would prefer that all of us come in at 9 AM and give him a good day's work, but out of all possibilities, this is often the optimal solution (he does not want to get woken up at 3AM and he likes getting about 13-14 good hours out of me per day), and I generally assume he understands this.
Maybe the pragmatic move in this case might be to sit down with your manager and explain that on paper, your "report" reports to you, but in practice, it seems like he really does a lot of work for him and ask if he would like to have him report directly to him rather than through you. If he agrees, that's the end of it. But if he disagrees, then explain to him that you're communicating to your report that he reports to you, but in order to avoid sending mixed messages, it would be helpful if he also helped communicate this to your employee.
So in other words, this isn't a problem; it's ultimately just an opportunity to redeploy resources where they can be used best. You just have to be careful to frame it this way; don't frame it as a problem- frame it as an organizational convenience.
|
|
|
|