I have heard first hand about some CEO or bosses deliberately practising meanness/curtness. The worst thing of all is I could not fathom they kind of justifying and moving on. Most likely if things are working something most be right.
Large orgs can do well due to market conditions despite it's leaders. To quote Andy Grove terminology, being an asshole seldom creates leverage. It's kinda cargo cult to figure out some prominent social behaviour of a CEO is the reason for orgs success when in reality there are so many things going on that are hard to observe as outsiders.
My personal favorite quote from a previous boss: "I left you alone last week when you were out for your wife's surgery. Now it's time for you to catch up."
What a douchebag. I'm glad you can describe this work relationship in the past sense.
Job role plays a big part in how civil someone thinks they are expected to be to one another. With the transactional nature of sales, I see many leaders approach their sales team with a sort of 'what have you done (closed) lately' mentality, which is a slippery slope that can get very ugly very quickly.
The question is why? What is the purpose of "work work work" at all costs?
Why do you think there's a purpose? The real world is not a narrative. It doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end; there is no rising or falling action; there are no stunning third act reveals; there are no happily ever afters. This is just the behavior that emerges (seemingly inevitably) from the ruleset of capitalism. It's like evolution -- the winners keep winning and the losers drop out. Eventually people adopt…
We have a very different idea of what a success or 'winning' as you put it means.
I've spent most of my career in a client facing role of one sort or another. One difference, at least from what I've seen, is that the incivility mentioned in the article is generally directed at the clients (behind closed doors of course). Especially once you grow past a size where losing a single client won't kill the company, you get the blame the client for everything that goes wrong (really just venting about th…
Funny, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago on this very issue: http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-10-commandments-of...
I agree with the general sentiment of your blog post but one claim caught my attention as not justified when it should be:
>Just as people’s salary is not an acceptable topic of conversation amongst colleagues I think negative opinions about clients should be similarly off limit for casual conversations.
The badmouthing of the client can get out of hand and become detrimental to your relationship with them. I have seen this happen. That employees shouldn't discuss their salaries is a piece of accepted wisdom but does experience support it? Personally, I can't say it does, but then again, it is such a rare freak occurrence you can hardly discern any trends. I suppose that under the conditions of a strong general taboo on it people talking about how much they make may already signal trouble; does it, however, create trouble where the taboo is weaker (e.g., in Europe)?
I am not urging to abandon the taboo on discussing your salary simply because I can't find a good reason for it but I would like to understand how it came about and whether the conditions
that created it still apply.
Civil face to face relations and at the same time "uncivil" communication via email. I've lately been experiencing this at my work place. Face to face, people are all really civil to each other, assertive, giving objective feedback and collaborating really well to get work done. However when things move to the written form (email mostly) things can quickly escalate into finger pointing and the blame game. Anyone got…
You are all a bunch of pussies who's afraid of talking face to face but go all Rambo when you got computers and network cables between you?
I have to say: working in a civil work environment makes a huge difference in terms of job satisfaction and job performance. Civility works for the business, the worker, and the customer. Nobody really benefits from incivility except for the arrogant power-monger over the very short term.
I totally agree. Working in a nice/friendly environment makes you more motivated and therefore more efficient.
This is a personal anecdote - my dad used to run a company that sorted second hand clothing. He had a huge warehouse, where people would stand in one place and literally pick clothes out of one basket and then sort them into several smaller ones, by colour or type. The atmosphere in the warehouse wasn't exactly perfect,but employees could talk to each other and they had a radio playing music. Based on some observations, he introduced a complete ban on casual talking and he took away the radio. Sure, for the employees it must have been much worse. But the productivity increased by 50% - an average amount sorted per day per employee was 400kg, after the change it went up to 600kg, which in the scale of things made a HUGE difference at the end of the month. The company could process a lot more with the same number of people. And yes, sure - people would get unhappy and leave, but it being rather easy manual labour - there were always 50 other people willing to take the position.
I'm not defending my father, I think the way he ran the company was horrible for the employees, but it's just the personal anecdote showing that working in a nice/friendly environment doesn't necessarily make you more efficient. They could chat, so they spent time chatting,not doing what they were paid to do.
Civil face to face relations and at the same time "uncivil" communication via email. I've lately been experiencing this at my work place. Face to face, people are all really civil to each other, assertive, giving objective feedback and collaborating really well to get work done. However when things move to the written form (email mostly) things can quickly escalate into finger pointing and the blame game. Anyone got…
You are all a bunch of pussies who's afraid of talking face to face but go all Rambo when you got computers and network cables between you?
lol, nice comment.
I think it might have something to do with this:
When you are face to face, the interaction tends to be 1 on 1 or involve a small number of people you work with day to day, there's a mutual benefit in having a healthy non violent, relationship (you are happier day to day if you are not an asshole towards others because on average they tend to respond in kind, by not being assholes either).
On the written channel, typically there are a lot more stakeholders in Cc (can include clients, managers higher in the hierarchy, people from other departments) and everyone feels more pressure to save face regarding mistakes or delays in work being done etc.
Also because email is usually the record that counts once responsibilities for a work outcome is attributed.
I have heard first hand about some CEO or bosses deliberately practising meanness/curtness. The worst thing of all is I could not fathom they kind of justifying and moving on. Most likely if things are working something most be right.
Large orgs can do well due to market conditions despite it's leaders. To quote Andy Grove terminology, being an asshole seldom creates leverage. It's kinda cargo cult to figure out some prominent social behaviour of a CEO is the reason for orgs success when in reality there are so many things going on that are hard to observe as outsiders.
Completely agree. Drawing positive correlation between CEO behaviour and success is fraught with lots holes. My peeve against this is people(employees) accepting such behaviour and to some extent condoning the same.
Also my last statements I meant the attitude of people that
"Most likely if things are working something most be right."