Survey: some bosses 'not nice'
Workplace surveys, gotta love ‘em. Here’s a prime example of the genre, reported in this morning’s Financial Times under the headline ‘Rise in dictatorial company managers’:
British managers are becoming overbearing and dogmatic at the expense of productivity, a report from the Chartered Institute of Management claimed on Tuesday.
A follow-up to a 2004 survey showed more team leaders using dictatorial approaches, with a five or more percentage point rise in the number of managers describing their companies style as “bureaucratic” (40 per cent), “reactive” (30 per cent) and “authoritarian” (30 per cent).
When organisations fail to hit their targets, most leaders and managers become secretive and bureaucratic, the institute said, and 45 per cent of managers report that sickness absence rises where employees are treated with suspicion.
UPDATE: This from a management skills quiz at www.makemeabettermanager.com, designed to find out whether you are a Machiavelli or a Mother Theresa. Stop sniggering, you at the back! There really is a website of that name. Surprise, surprise, it sells management skills training courses:
4. Your staff are becoming disgruntled at being asked to put in extra time more and more often, as times are tough. The Board has come up with a new initiative aimed at putting the company back on top but it’s going to mean asking your team to work late even more often in the coming months. Do you:-
Organise a tree-hugging weekend and tell them what’s coming once everyone has bonded?
Devise an incentive scheme whereby the most successful 3 staff will get an all-expenses paid weekend in Paris?
Get them into your office and tell them they’re going to have to redouble their efforts?
Er … promise them all double time, or double time off in lieu? Offer them bonuses worth more than a year's salary, because after all, that's what the board gets? Hire more people, because your department is obviously seriously short-staffed? Not even given as possible answers. Shit, I knew there was a reason why I’ve never been promoted.
Workplace surveys, gotta love ‘em. Here’s a prime example of the genre, reported in this morning’s Financial Times under the headline ‘Rise in dictatorial company managers’:
British managers are becoming overbearing and dogmatic at the expense of productivity, a report from the Chartered Institute of Management claimed on Tuesday.
A follow-up to a 2004 survey showed more team leaders using dictatorial approaches, with a five or more percentage point rise in the number of managers describing their companies style as “bureaucratic” (40 per cent), “reactive” (30 per cent) and “authoritarian” (30 per cent).
When organisations fail to hit their targets, most leaders and managers become secretive and bureaucratic, the institute said, and 45 per cent of managers report that sickness absence rises where employees are treated with suspicion.
UPDATE: This from a management skills quiz at www.makemeabettermanager.com, designed to find out whether you are a Machiavelli or a Mother Theresa. Stop sniggering, you at the back! There really is a website of that name. Surprise, surprise, it sells management skills training courses:
4. Your staff are becoming disgruntled at being asked to put in extra time more and more often, as times are tough. The Board has come up with a new initiative aimed at putting the company back on top but it’s going to mean asking your team to work late even more often in the coming months. Do you:-
Organise a tree-hugging weekend and tell them what’s coming once everyone has bonded?
Devise an incentive scheme whereby the most successful 3 staff will get an all-expenses paid weekend in Paris?
Get them into your office and tell them they’re going to have to redouble their efforts?
Er … promise them all double time, or double time off in lieu? Offer them bonuses worth more than a year's salary, because after all, that's what the board gets? Hire more people, because your department is obviously seriously short-staffed? Not even given as possible answers. Shit, I knew there was a reason why I’ve never been promoted.