A Day at Works

“A large part of what a good boss does is expedite things for employees – that is, help them get their jobs done by removing obstacles. This is not at all the same as ‘making sure’ they get their jobs done by raising the anxiety level. Most people are anxious enough already.” -David Sirota, head of Sirota Survey Intelligence, a research firm headquartered in Purchase, N.Y., that has surveyed millions of employees in Fortune 500 companies since its founding in 1972.

3 goals at work: fairness, achievement and camaraderie

In his book, “The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want” (Wharton School Publishing), Sirota conclude from researches that people in general have 3 goals at work: fairness, achievement and camaraderie. If these 3 goals are met, you have enthusiastic employees.

What he means by fairness is employee wants to feel that they are being recognized and rewarded fairly. Achievement means that employee wants to be proud of the organization and their place in it. Camaraderie means employee wants good working relations and a sense of belonging to a team.

The trouble is that, morale among new hires is high and by about 6 month has dropped sharply. Management has destroyed it. One thing bad bosses do is to deliberately make people feel insecure about their jobs. Another is treat employees like children or criminals instead of like responsible adults.

Sign of Bad Boss

A sign of a really bad boss is micromanaging, which Sirota define as devoting punitive amount of attention to minute. Employee has to raise his hand if they want to go to restroom. Another sign is no positive feedback.
All of this behavior of bad boss derived from a combination of an over positive self concept with theory X which see others always negative.

Why should companies care whether employees are enthusiastic or not, as long as the work gets done?

Many research evident show a direct link between employee morale and the overall performance of the firm, including stock price. The correlation is a result of how employees treated is reflected to how employees treat customers.

Since most bosses, including the bad one, always think they are doing the right thing thus management should always 360-degree evaluation to have constructive critics and an open dialogue to make sure people giving an honest feedback.

Micromanagement is a management style where manager closely observes or controls every steps of the work of employees. This style arise from manager himself who 1) concerns for details, 2) want to increase performance pressure, 3) wants to spread insecurity to eliminate unwanted employees, 4) seen employees as incompetence or can not be trusted, or 5) to securing his position because the low ratio of boss and workers.

In modern organization tendency to concentrate power in the hand of single person is unproductive, thus excessive control over employees as happened in micromanagement is left aside. In contrary, modern management delegates power to make decision to the frontline who face customer and problem to increase customer and employee satisfaction, as long as the firm recruit the employees with the right atitude and capability (known as adult employee in HR literature).

In real world, control is still important because not all employees are adult (although management all employees as adult). In this condition, manager need to give detail instruction (telling style), and giving pressure for higher performance. By these 2 motives manager MUST hands-on to the work of employees. Management style arise from these motives is known as hands-on management. Contrary to micromanagement, hands-on management is arise because of job context, while micromanagement as stated earlier more often arise from manager himself who have personal trait to concern for detail, personal agenda (pressure for higher performance, eliminate employees or to securing his position), or negative attitude toward employees (seen employees as incompetence or can not be trusted)

Although micromanagement and hands-on management are based on control paradigm, but in hands-on management, control is needed to serve interest of the firm, management and employees – not merely to serve the concern of the boss. That’s why micromanagement has negative conotation, and damage trust, commitment and loyalty which at the end will damage human productivity.