Management Sins

Recently a business colleague of mine left her supervisory job because her own manager’s behavior was unprofessional and deeply disturbing, to the point where she couldn’t take it anymore.

The manager in question had lots of seniority with 15 years in the company. So, let’s examine what this manager was doing to make his staff so unhappy.

Sin #1: Power Trip: This manager told the supervisor not to praise employees for their good work! He didn’t want them to feel valued for their work, or to feel secure about their status in the organization. This was his way of exercising “power”.

Sin #2: Arbitrary Changes: He asked employees to do their own performance reviews and submit them directly to him. Instead of having a review meeting with employees, he would make his own changes and send the review to higher management!

Sin #3: Pay Changes: This manager routinely made adjustments to people’s pay, particularly commissions, without telling the affected employees.

Sin #4: No Communication: This manager hired new employees without telling anyone in the department. When the new person showed up to work, the staff wondered what the new job was. This was his way of trying to keep people on edge about their job security.

Sin #5: No Warning Letters: In keeping with his management style, he would fire people without warning letters of any sort.

Sin #6: No Couth: He once yelled at a senior manager for just telling employees that another employee was returning to work from a long sick leave. He said it was none of their business.

Needless to say, staff turnover was very high in his department. You have to wonder about the higher-level managers. They must have been asleep at the switch to not see what was going on!

Here’s a good one submitted to us: Recruitment Horror Story

“It all started with me responding to an ad on a popular internet job board. This was for a mid-Manager level job at a mid-sized company I had not heard of the company before but did a bit of research on the internet. The ad was fairly well written, but looked a bit text bookish.

After three weeks, since applying, I was starting to think it was just another job that I would never hear back from, sort of common for applying in this fashion I guess.

I put my residence and cell number on my resume. The recruiter in the HR Dept for the company called me at 9:30 one morning at my current employer informing me I was to be at an interview at 5:00 the same day. Surely this is unusual in my experience, being invited to an interview on this short notice. I was told that the hiring Manager had to fly out of town later that day and this time slot was all that would be available for two weeks. The recruiter seemed very rushed and not friendly at all. I mentioned that we had a casual work environment and that I would need to go home to change and that this was quite out of my way, but I would commit to being there at 5:00.

I was in an almost all day Mgmt meeting and could not get back to my desk to clear any voice mails or emails. On my way out of the meeting room right off the reception area with my peers and several senior managers present, our junior receptionist mentioned I had repeated calls from an angry person asking why I don’t answer my phone or return emails, and also that this person was wanting to pass on the message to bring a hard copy of my resume for the interview and that the time had been changed to 4:30 today. I was horrified, as all my peers and even my boss heard this. I was ready to blow up. My face turned red as a beet, I was so embarrassed that all I could do was walk back to my office fuming and try to deal with this. I had to cool down before phoning this person to confirm while not losing my cool.

Fifteen minutes went by and I called the recruiter. She started off the conversation by asking how serious I was about applying for this job. I calmly mentioned I was in a long meeting and could not be interrupted. She went on to tell me that if I was genuinely interested, I would have had some reason to leave the meeting to check on voice or email because of my job search I was doing. Biting my tongue, I asked to confirm what the new time was again.  This time the recruiter started raising her voice saying, “you mean after all my calls, you still didn’t get the message”? I replied by stating that I heard it was now 4:30. By now, I am angry at this person, so I told her that it was not very professional to keep calling me and also that asking to attend an interview the same day is not very considerate for candidates. There was a long pause, and then she said, “are you coming or not?”  I said I would be there.

I had to leave almost immediately to get home first to make this interview time, I now knew my boss was aware, so I left unannounced, to avoid an embarrassing communication exchange. All during this time, I am trying to think, what am I going to say to my boss tomorrow about all this. Now I am changed and driving to the interview.

After 20 minutes in the car, I get a call from the recruiter telling me the hiring manager has reconsidered because of my perceived “communication problem” and is now not interested in seeing me. By this time I have really had it, so I let this poor recruiter have it big time. I can’t ever recall letting loose like that on the phone. So, I headed back home to unwind. Later in the evening I received a call from my boss. She was very pleasant as always, and asked how my interview went. I had a very good relationship with her, so I decided to tell her the whole story. She laughed. She also asked me why I wanted to leave the company. I said it was because I did not see a progressive career path for myself there. She mentioned we should talk in the morning, where she proceeded to tell me I would be promoted to a Management level job within 4 weeks after some internal restructuring was completed.”

What did we learn in all of this?

#1 Keep in good clear communication with your manager, let your needs be known

#2 Do your homework if you decide to look outside your company for a job

#3 Be aware of how you are treated by a potential employer in the interview process, this is very telling of how they will behave in the future

#4 Trying to please a potential employer by going on the same day as the invite is probably not a good idea anyways

#5 If you have ever dealt with a professional recruiter before, you would know right away there was something not right about this opportunity