Sunday, June 26, 2011

Your team hates you. Really. I'm not kidding.

Your team hates you. Really. They do. They hate you but they just won’t say so because they know better.  The Navy has taught them to bite their tongue and to grin and bear it until either you or they transfer. But when they go home at night, they spill their bile about their taskmaster of a boss who does nothing but drive them crazy (isn’t that what you do too?).

10 Reasons Your Team Hates You: 

10. You don’t prioritize. Everything is important. When you do this, you remove your team’s ability to say no to less important work and focus their efforts on critical tasks. 

9. You treat them like employees. You don’t know a darn thing about them as a person (which makes them feel like nothing more than a number). 

8. You don’t fight for them. When is the last time you went to bat for a team member? And I mean went to bat where you had something to lose if it didn’t work out? When you don’t stand up for them, you lose their trust. 

7. You tell them to “have a balanced life” then set a bad example. You tell them weekends are precious and they should spend them with their family then you go and send them emails or voice mails on Sunday afternoon. 

6. You never relax. You walk around like you have a potato chip wedged between your butt cheeks and you’re trying not to break it. When you’re uptight all the time, it makes them uptight. Negative or stressful energy transfers to others. 

5. You micromanage. You know every detail of what they’re working on and you’ve become a control freak. They have no room to make decisions on their own (which means yes, they’ll make a mistake or two). 

4. You’re a suck-up. If your boss stopped short while walking down the hall, you’d break your neck. Your team hates seeing you do this because it demonstrates lack of spine and willingness to fight for them. It can also signal to them that you expect them to be a sycophant just like you. 

3. You treat them like mushrooms. Translation: they’re kept in the dark and fed a bunch of crap. Do you ration information? Do you withhold “important” things from them because it’s “need to know” only? All you’re doing is creating gossip and fear.  

2. You’re above getting your hands dirty. You’re great at assigning work. Doing work? Not so much. They hate watching you preside (and they hate it even more when you take credit for what they slaved over).

1. You’re indecisive. Maybe. Or not. But possibly. Yeah. No. I don’t know. OH MY GOSH MAKE A DECISION ALREADY! That’s what you get paid to do as the leader. You drive them crazy with your incessant flip-flopping or waffling (mmmm waffles… oh. Sorry… still writing). 

More about this over HERE at Thought Leaders.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Truer words have never been spoken! I have worked for a supervisor like this.

Anonymous said...

Oh my! Captain, you've described your problem so well here.

Anonymous said...

I don't disagree with any of the points individually, but on the overall theme of the topic. Is the goal to be liked? Focus should be on mission accomplishment and being respected. The worst DIVOs onboard have banded their 'teams' together by blaming the CO/XO and undermining them at every turn. They want to be the hero and their divisions love them. The Sailors don't realize how much these leaders are failing them.

Anonymous said...

The goal is not to be liked, but to accomplish the mission. The challenge for the DivO is when the mission is a mess and the senior leadership is lost. What does the LT say to his Chief when the Skipper is contradicting the XO, contradicting the OpsO? Does he keep faith with his Os or does he and the Chief try to make the best of it? (By agreeing that the CO/XO are asses?)

Anonymous said...

Yes, you two are right. The goal is not to be liked. However, the goal is to have a cohesive team who all work together to get the mission accomplished, while doing their best to retain a shred of sanity and dignity. Bosses like this (one of whom I currently work for) do nothing but defeat that mission and lose the respect of their subordinates (and often their superiors who see them as the bumbling fools they are). We want to serve a leader with a spine. It's not asking too much.