281–290 of 461 posts
Leadership roles mean some tasks become 'only you' tasks.
Part of that is a radically changed power dynamic. Asking someone to pick up a coffee for you suddenly isn't just a question they can feel safe saying no to - favors aren't favors anymore. Don't put your direct reports in that position, ever.
That Band of Brothers scene w/ Winters and Compton about playing poker with the troops actually covers this idea really well.
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Do you have significant amount of control? Maybe I've been lucky to be part of mostly healthy organizations, but even managers have to justify/explain decisions. Either be for termination, compensation adjustment, reassigning to a different team, etc. I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimi…
I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimited firing power and I still need to regroup with HR when it comes to that. Having that system in place isn't enough. You need that system to have teeth, and you need to have someone with as much power as you who will review your decisions and play dev…
I'm aware of 'protected characteristics', but they cut both ways, not something you can be or not be.
I've always had a really dry sense of humor. When I moved into a management role, my director took me aside and said something to the effect of, "I have a dry sense of humor too. When I started managing people I had to build a filter between the jokes that pop into my head and the words that escape my mouth." This was from my first year of managing when I had one screw-up that led people who overheard the interaction…
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I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimited firing power and I still need to regroup with HR when it comes to that. Having that system in place isn't enough. You need that system to have teeth, and you need to have someone with as much power as you who will review your decisions and play dev…
What's a 'protected class of worker'? I'm aware of 'protected characteristics', but they cut both ways, not something you can be or not be.
https://www.eeoc.gov/youth/what-employment-discrimination
Specifically, I meant that when you're firing someone who falls into those categories, HR will often require you to document extra well why it's not employment discrimination, in case there's a lawsuit.
I am really surprised one has to write a blog post about this. I am not a manager, but here is a question for managers, have you or anyone you know, joked about firing someone? In my opinion, that would be incredibly cruel and stupid.
Many think that leadership IQ is something innate, but some aspects definitely either have to be explained, or learned the hard way. That's totally ok though - it means most of us have what it takes to manage if we're willing to learn.
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Part of life is tactfully dealing with people who have power over you. It’s not very comfortable for anyone.
Wisdom is realizing no one really has power over you. You are voluntarily & temporarily handing over that power to someone else in exchange for money. The moment you renounce your desire for money from that company, you get back that power you handed over. And that was, is, and will, always be your decision. Thus, the power never left your hands.
All well and good if you can afford it. If you can not, then the existential wisdom is a lot less useful than, say, worker's rights.
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I always had to document and explain why I thought an employee deserved a raise, or should not get a bonus, etc. Even as a director with ~20 reports I don't have unlimited firing power and I still need to regroup with HR when it comes to that. Having that system in place isn't enough. You need that system to have teeth, and you need to have someone with as much power as you who will review your decisions and play dev…
What's a 'protected class of worker'? I'm aware of 'protected characteristics', but they cut both ways, not something you can be or not be.
> I'm aware of 'protected characteristics', but they cut both ways, not something you can be or not be.
The legal term of art is “protected class” and not all of them cut both ways (age over 40, disability, and veteran status are all one-sided protected classes.)
But.
Counter signaling is a powerful tool in the social toolbox, and it works exactly when uncertainty and discomfort may be present. The problem isn't the counter-signaling, it's the poor social models and actual lack of trust and common knowledge between the people.
I think this advice is practical because any given manager is going to create a mediocre-at-best environment, but in my perfect world there would be enough trust and common knowledge about exactly where everyone stands that a joke like this would be a nonissue.
That means in my perfect world managers would be better at creating that.
The reason I am saying this is that if you go away from this thread with the idea "joking about serious things is bad," then your job is done when you simply don't do the bad thing. But if the lesson is actually "you don't have the skill necessary to create the safety and clarity on your team to make a joke like this and have it be fine" then you have affordance to maybe be better at creating safety and clarity--at least you have a trailhead to start looking.
I grew up believing having thick skin was really important. I took this to heart, and now nothing phases me (and I’ve been in a variety of nasty situations that confirmed this). I realize this is not the norm, but I wish it was. Avoiding trigger words and peoples’ sensitivities is frustrating and further complicates complex discussions. I’m not saying we should be robots. I still have feelings. If someone I love show…
This isn't a dirty joke, it's abuse of a hierarchical relationship.
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>Yes, and that ignorance is a _privelege_ of power. No it's not. There we go. My statement has as much evidentiary support as yours. Have you ever thought about the usefulness and evidentiary support of using this weird leftist nomenclature to reframe traditionally understood concepts? Like what value did you bring by reframing 'ignorance' as 'privilege' - but 'privilege' not in the sense of the dictionary definition…
Seems like a pretty straightforward point to me. Powerful people are punished less for their lack of understanding of less powerful, even though the consequences of their ignorance are worse. Who has more reason to worry, a manager making a joke about firing someone, or an employee making a joke about forming a union with their coworkers? There's a reason that one of these two groups needed to be given legal protecti…
I'm sure it does, but it's not.
>Powerful people are punished less for their lack of understanding of less powerful
That's not true. Or it's true in some situations and not in others. It is also true in some situations of subordinates.
>Who has more reason to worry, a manager making a joke about firing someone, or an employee making a joke about forming a union with their coworkers?
There are occasions where an employee can make a joke that would get a manager into trouble or into MORE trouble if they made that joke. There are behaviours that would get a manager into trouble and not the employee. The managerial and subordinate positions each come with their own set of rights, responsibilities, and privileges. My good friend, for example, declined a managerial 'promotion' because he was happy doing what he was doing and didn't want the extra stress and pressure. Back in uni when I worked as a part-timer at Staples, my manager was the hardest worker I've ever seen. She pulled crazy hours while some of us messed around and did as little as we could to get through the shift. To top it all off, she is the one that got yelled at by difficult customers, and not us - even if we screwed up. You can come up with alternative examples where the manager was a lazy bum and employees were super hard workers ... why? Because human organizations are complex and each one has different dynamics at play and different cultures. So thinking about it terms of the idiotic and shallow 'privilege' idea misses all those dynamics and complexity. So no, 'privilege' is not the right metaphor for the discussion at hand, and it isn't straightforward.