Boss's Day Thoughts

For National Boss's Day,  the WSJ put together some comments from staffing and consulting companies that show how bad bosses can damage workplace.

The comments are useful, if obvious, but I've always thought that to get real examples of bad management and how it affects people's work, you should talk to employment lawyers.  Let's face it, most of us have seen things that would curl the hair of those that still have some. The reported employment law cases are bad enough-the stuff that doesn't get reported is truly remarkable. So here are some hard won lessons regarding bosses from an employment lawyer:

1. Character matters. Supervisors who are dishonest, sleep around, and take advantage of people in their personal lives will, in my experience, infect the workplace with their lousy moral outlook. And notwithstanding our views that people can compartmentalize bad behavior (think Bill Clinton, for example), my experience is that who you are inevitably comes out around people with whom you spend most of your non-sleeping day.

2. Accountability is the hardest attribute to develop in a modern manager.  For whatever reason, people are loath to hold their subordinates accountable until things get absolutely intolerable. Front line supervisors and mid-level managers must be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their direct reports, and act appropriately in response to demonstrated instances of poor performance.

3. Supervisors should take care of their subordinates, both in terms of protecting them and ensuring they have physical necessities to perform their work, and to ensure that they develop professionally within the company. This aspect of leadership is often lost on American corporate managers. I saw the best example of its application when I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy. The officer in charge of my cadet squadron and I were getting ready to line up to get a meal at a field kitchen. He pulled me aside and we waited until all the cadets under my command were in the chow line and being served. Only after everyone had food on their plate did we get our meal. "As commander, you eat last," the officer said. The message was explicit-your job as a boss is to take care of the people underneath you first, and worry about your personal needs later.  In the same vein, the best bosses look to develop the professional strengths and mitigate the professional weaknesses of their subordinates so that they continue to grow as employees and develop skills that will make them more of an asset to the employer, and also better themselves.  By the way, the officer in question was easily the finest officer with whom I served in 27 years of active and reserve time.

May all of your bosses be good ones.

Paterno's Failure

And so now we know that Penn State coach Joe Paterno, after getting a credible report of horrific behavior from one of his assistants, simply kicked it up the management food chain and then stopped thinking about it.  He never acted like someone who thought, really thought, about what would happen if the allegations were true, or if his legal superiors (but who were not the keepers of his legacy) treated this report the way he did.

I still don't get it.  You can't be the head coach of a program that prides itself on above board, upright operation, and turn something like this over to bureaucrats without a second thought.  By the time this event happened, Penn State football was a brand, and so was Paterno.  He abandoned both.

This is a lesson that needs to be reinforced to senior management everywhere--just being legal isn't enough sometimes.  Sometimes you have to take responsibility for the organization's character and well being.  Amazingly, no one thought about what the revelation that a potential pedophile operated within the halls of the Penn State athletic department would mean, to the kids affected, to the organization, or to various individuals on the periphery.  This was a monumental failure of judgement, character, ethics, fortitude, and just about every other quality we believe is essential to running an effective business.  A failure at all levels, too.

UPDATE:  And so the whole miserable house of cards that was the Paterno empire comes crashing down.  Again, what is evident is that the money, prestige, and political influence of big time college athletics simply overwhelmed the values and judgment of the people running the school.  This affair is another lesson that power corrupts, and allowing one individual to amass so much influence is a recipe for disaster.  On occasion I deal with clients that have the misfortune to have created people like Paterno in his last few years.  Invariably, I counsel them to jettison the employee at first opportunity.  Otherwise, the entire organization becomes infected with the moral decay emanating from the power center.
I'll hope this lesson is taken seriously in organizations across the country, but I doubt it will be more than a year or two before we read of some similar ethical failure.