Discontents of the imperial workplace

By Silvio Laccetti

Can't stand your boss? Don't like his attitude toward his "people"? Is she too vain? Does he have an air of presumed royalty?

Survey results summarized in a Wall Street Journal article this month made it clear that too many new frontline managers seriously overrate themselves. Nearly three-quarters of them never even doubt their ability to lead.

Other reports suggest that similar problems percolate up through the higher levels of management.

The only skills that some bosses acknowledge they need to develop are coaching, delegating, and gaining employee commitment. Still, only a pitiful 15 percent of those in the survey admitted room for improvement in those skills, which are among the most crucial for success.

Failures in these areas of management and leadership mean companies are wasting or at least underusing their most precious resource: employees. According to a Forbes magazine report, two-thirds of workers and 50 percent of the global economy are affected by such waste.

Why does this gross inefficiency prevail? According to management consultant Doug Brown of Paradigm Associates, one major problem is that bosses, like most people, view their behavior "through the lens of intent, rather than by actual results produced, thus skewing their self-evaluations."

Add puffed-up egos and insufficient training, and we have a recipe for poor management.

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Such self-deluding managers can become blind to reality. And they may demand an obsequiousness, cultlike following of yes-men and -women.

A splendid example comes from my own observation of a college dean. Upon investiture in his office, he had no administrative training or leadership experience. His disconnectedness became an absurdity and an embarrassment. When he spoke to assembled faculty members, he would close his eyes and ramble, reconnecting only for brief moments. He was in his own little autocratic world.

Unfortunately, poor management and errant leadership have deep systemic and cultural roots. First, workers essentially give up their right to speak freely in the American workplace. Mere suggestions may be considered disagreeable or disloyal, inviting suspicion, ostracism, and even dismissal.

A second right largely lost, except to unionized workers, is due process. Despite a plethora of rules and procedures, workers who lodge protests often find that the rules can change and that they aren't due anything. Just as royal law changes with the king's whim, due process is easily undone in the workplace.

Fortunately, there have been countercurrents to this monarchy by management. Civil-service rules ameliorated many of these problems in the public sector, and unions are good at ensuring due process in the workplace. But these defenses can also become drawn-out wastes of valuable time, playing out in a farce of muted Marxist class conflict.

Are there more effective and long-term solutions to management's trouble with teaching and learning? Peter LaChance of Yardley-based Quintessence Corp. offers one promising but extremely difficult strategy. His "natural learning" approach urges companies to create an environment in which it's safe to fail and safe to openly discuss failure.

Thus, managers discover for themselves (a learning cornerstone, from Socrates to psychoanalysis) what must be done to improve. LaChance's coaching style involves engineering "hurt and rescue" situations in which a manager fails (hurt) and then is helped to work through the failure (rescue) to become a better leader. Coaching this way isn't easy, LaChance says. "Most people don't have the stomach for it - even though it brings permanent improvements," he said.

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Another strategy, touted in a study at Bath University in Britain, is to devise strong, shared corporate cultures. Nokia offers one of the best examples, perhaps because the Finns are a special case: There just aren't many of them in the world, so everyone is valuable and necessary. Dissent is tolerated as long as unity and harmony, based on rationality, ultimately prevail. We need more culture like this in America, where we are so many and so wasteful.

And there is yet another solution, also not easily achieved, for individuals harried by princely bosses: Motivate yourself into a better work situation. The king is dead. Long live the new job!