Work Matters

Tag: Good Boss Bad Boss

  • Dan Pink’s Review and Interview:Good Boss, Bad Boss

    Images Dan Pink, author of numerous bestsellers including Drive and A Whole New Mind, wrote a very nice review of Good Boss, Bad Boss on his blog. I also think he did a great job of capturing the main point:

    The core point, at least as I read it, is that good bosses are adept
    at working both sides of the street. They improve people’s performance and they deepen their humanity.
    As Sutton says, good
    bosses “do everything possible to help people do great work,” yet they
    also “do everything possible to help people experience dignity and
    pride.”

     Dan also links to the answers that I gave to a series of interview questions that he  sent me.  I got carried away answering them — as Dan put it oh-so diplomatically — so they were a "tad long" for a reasonable post.   Dan decided it was best to just put the whole interview on separate link, which he did here.  For better or worse, it is the longest interview in print about Good Boss, Bad Boss.

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss Speeches in September

    Susan Angel Devil

    As Good Boss, Bad Boss is officially published this month — in fact, today is the official publication day — I am doing quite a few speeches on the book. Most are "closed," but three are open to the public, as indicated below.  I hope to see you at one of these events:

    September 8th: Disney Studios (Burbank, CA)

    September 8th: IDEO (Palo Alto, CA)

    September 9th: Pixar  (Emeryville, CA)

    September 10th: Google (Mountain View, CA)

    September 16th: Center for Corporate Innovation (Boston, MA)

    September 17th: Leading Strategic Execution (Stanford Executive Program, requires enrollment)

    September 20th: Commonwealth Club, San Francisco (Open to the public, admission is $20 and 7$ for students, sign up online)

    September 23: Learning Essence (Mexico City, Mexico).

    September 29th: Amazon (Seattle, WA).

    September 30th: Commonwealth Club, Silicon Valley, noon to 1pm (Santa Clara, CA. Open to the public, admission is $20; sign-up online)

    September 30th, Xerox PARC Forum (Palo Alto, CA, 6:00 PM.  Free and open to the public)

    3 P.S. Those beautiful angel and devil chairs at the top of the post above are by Susan Kare , who did them (and the rest of the design) for my Good Boss, Bad Boss PowerPoint deck, and who also consulted on the cover design for the book.  Susan has done many fantastic designs and is most famous for designing many of the icons on the original Macintosh, including the trash can and that frowning smiling face that Macs made when they booted.
    Susan-kare2

  • New Research: There Are A LOT Of Good Bosses Out There

     
    AngelChair In the introduction to Good Boss, Bad Boss, I emphasize that — following an inspiring comment from my wife, Marina, who has worked in numerous management positions — my motivation for writing it was to describe the moods and moves of the best bosses.  Or as Marina put it, to draw on the best evidence and cases I could find to show "what that looks like."  I sometimes worry that in talking about bossholes, brassholes, and assholes that I emphasize  bad bosses too much.  I think it is important to keep in mind that most bosses want to be both competent and caring, and there are a lot of good bosses out there who are aiming to hone their craft.  Those are the people that I had in mind when I wrote the book — not so much the losers and jerks.

    Toward the end, a new study came out today that reinforces this positive spirit.  It is based on a nice random probability sample of Americans by StrategyOne, which suggests that most working Americans have good bosses.  In this survey, over 80% of respondents reported that they felt respected by their bosses and that their bosses respect their work.  There was evidence that some people out there fear their bosses, as 26% feared being fired by their bosses if they took a day off from work.   On the whole, however, this survey paints a picture of people who are generally satisfied with their work, bosses, and companies — although I given all that, I found it strange that 56% would be at least somewhat interested in leaving for a job with the same compensation elsewhere. Perhaps that was explained in part by the general job insecurity out there, which you see in this survey as well, with 44% reporting that they have had their pay cut in the last couple years and 46% reporting being concerned about losing their jobs. 

    To return to my main point, however, I think it is important — as Labor Day weekend in the U.S. is starting — to take some pride in the quality of most of the 20 million or so bosses in our country (estimates run as high 38 million bosses), and to remember that while work can be a source of dissatisfaction and distress, and bad bosses do suck, that most of the 90% of us in the workforce who have bosses are satisfied with these immediate superiors and, more important than that, feel respected by them.  I would also add that, equally heartening, is that most bosses I know are not only competent, most devote considerable energy to getting better at their jobs.  As I said at the outset, I wrote Good Boss, Bad Boss in hopes it would be of some help to all the hard working bosses out there strive to keep honing their difficult craft.

  • Is Your Boss A Certified Brasshole? Take The BRASS And Find Out

    Frequent readers of this blog know that one of the most successful tools, or if you prefer, PR gimmicks, we did for The No Asshole Rule was an online quiz called the ARSE, the Asshole Rating Self-Exam.  This is a 24 item quiz to determine if you are a certified asshole.  Approximately 250,000 people have completed it so far, and I still have people come up to (or email me) and say things like "I scored a 2, I am very good" or "I got a 9, I am borderline, watch out."  The items on ARSE appeared in book, but the name was added by Guy Kawasaki and he recruited the wonderful folks at Electric Pulp to develop an online version.

    DevilChair In the spirit of the ARSE — and once again with some great coaching from Guy– I have developed the BRASS, the Boss Reality Assessment Survey System (I know it is dumb spelled out, in fact if you have a better idea, let me know… one suggestion that I kind of liked was "Bob's Roughly Accurate Superior Survey").  The 20 items on the BRASS draw on major themes from Good Boss, Bad Boss, which are used to rate your boss on items including:

    Is so pushy and overbearing that it drives us nuts

    Lacks confidence in his or her ability to lead others

    Doesn't have our backs, won't go to bat for us, and doesn't protect us from the idiocy that rains down from on high

    Leaves me feeling drained and de-energized after even a short conversation.

    Is a chronic credit hog.AngelChair

    The higher the score, the worse your boss.  If your boss is really bad, if he or she scores "true" on 15 or more items like these, then you have the misfortune of working for a certified brasshole. And if your boss scores below five, my advice is that you better treat him or her right, because one like that is hard to find! 

  • What Are Signs That Your Boss Cares About You?

    My post on the power of bosses who take a moment to offer a simple "thanks" to people got me thinking about the more general question of little signs that your boss cares for you.  Certainly, as my recent HBR article shows, when a boss "has your back" that is sign that he or she cares about you.  But when I made my top 10 list, I had the distinct feeling that I was leaving out a lot of important stuff.  So I guess this is a form of open source PR.  To get the conversation started, here are are 10 signs that your boss really really cares about you, based largely on Good Boss, Bad Boss:

    1. REALLY listens to what you say, doesn't just pretend.

    2. Is careful to give you as much — or even more — credit than you deserve.

    3. Sticks-up for you behind your back.

    4.  Takes care not to embarrass you.

    5.  Apologizes sincerely and completely when he or she does something that upsets or hurts you.

    6. Goes out of his or her way to make it easier for you to mesh the challenges in your personal life with your job.

    7. Is respectful of your time.

    8. Takes time to learn your quirks and idiosyncrasies — and accommodates them within in reason.

    9. Goes the extra mile to make sure that you succeed at your job and keep developing skills.

    10. Doesn't bullshit you about your weaknesses or screw-ups — tells you the truth.

    This is just first draft.  What should I add?  What should I remove?  Do you have any stories along these lines?   I look forward to your comments and I will revise and extend the list after hearing your ideas and comments.

  • The Boss as Human Shield: Protect People from Your Own Worst Instincts Too

    Boring-meeting-largethumb1613679

    Over at HBR online today, one of the articles they are featuring is my piece on The Boss as Human Shield.  One point the article makes, and that I emphasize in Good Boss, Bad Boss , is that your job as a boss isn't just to protect employees from other idiots — it is also to protect them your own idiocy.  At or near the top of the list are bad meetings, too many meetings, and meetings that run too long.  The picture above of a boring meeting made me laugh and and made me think.  If the people at the meetings you run look like that, you might want to think about having fewer meetings and changing how the are done (see the example here and here of an all-hands meeting at Timbuk2 that our students at the d.school helped fix.. there were people sleeping at the meeting too before it was changed).

    Certainly, meetings are sometimes necessary, but are often ran badly.  What do you do to hold just the right number of meetings and to run them effectively? 

  • HBR Article on The Boss as a Human Shield: 100 Free Downloads

    Sutton_penultimate

    As I wrote yesterday, I just had an HBR article on "The Boss as Human Shield" appear, which presents some of the main points from Chapter 6 of Good Boss, Bad Boss.   HBR online posts the text of the article for free for a few weeks, so you can go here and read it now if you want.  But they also give authors 100 free PDF's.  If you would like one, please go here to get it.   Please just take one so that others can have a copy.  And if you try to get a copy and they are gone, please email me so I can let people know.

    P.S. The above picture is the opening graphic for the article; it was inspired by an executive I quote in the article who talked about how, when people mistakes, sometimes her job is to let them "hide behind my skirt."

  • The Boss as Human Shield: New HBR Article Based on Good Boss, Bad Boss

    The September Harvard Business Review includes my "The Boss as Human Shield," which presents some of the main points in Chapter 6 of Good Boss, Bad Boss.  From what I can tell, HBR puts up articles on their website for the month the issue is on the stands, but then sells them for six bucks or after that (also, they do this weird thing where they pay $100 for the article… and you get no royalties after that.. really a brilliant financial model as they are so skilled at selling their articles in so many ways).  So you can read the whole article there now and, if you like, leave a comment.  The core idea of the article — like Chapter 6 — is the best bosses lead people who construe that he or she has "got my back."  Here are the opening paragraphs of "The Boss as Human Shield:"

    William Coyne headed research and development at 3M—the company
    behind Ace bandages, Post-it notes, Scotch tape, and other
    inventions—for over a decade. Shortly after retiring, Coyne spoke to a
    group of hundreds of executives about innovation at 3M and his own
    management style. He said he’d started at 3M as a researcher and learned
    firsthand how well-meaning but nosy executives who proffer too many
    questions and suggestions can undermine creative work. So when he became
    head of R&D, he was determined to allow his teams to work for long
    stretches, unfettered by intrusions from higher-ups. Coyne understood
    his colleagues’ curiosity; if successful, an R&D project could
    generate millions in new revenue. But he limited their interference (and
    his own) because, he said, “After you plant a seed in the ground, you
    don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing.    ”

    Coyne knew that the performance of his employees—as well as his
    career and the company’s success—depended on shielding them from
    threats. This notion that management “buffers” the core work of the
    company from uncertainty and external perturbations is an old theme in
    organizational theory, going back at least to James D. Thompson’s 1967
    classic     Organizations in Action.
    The best bosses are committed to letting their workers work—whether on
    creative tasks such as inventing new products or on routine things such
    as assembling computers, making McDonald’s burgers, or flying planes.
    They take pride in being human shields, absorbing or deflecting heat
    from inside and outside the company, doing all manner of boring and
    silly tasks, and battling idiots and slights that make life harder than
    necessary on their people

    Check the rest out and let me know what you think –and what some of the other ways are that great bosses protect their people.

  • “Forgive and Remember” is Most Read at HBR

    I am continuing to march through my list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe over at HBR as we get close to the official release of Good Boss, Bad Boss. My last post — #8 on the list — digs into a familiar theme for readers of this blog and my books, "Forgive and Remember" It is currently #1 on HBR's "Most Read" list.  Here is how it opens:

    I have authored or co-authored five books for managerial audiences in
    the past decade. If you want to save yourself the trouble of reading all
    of them, and just want to know the one idea that I believe to be most
    important, this is it: Failure is inevitable, so the key to success is
    to be good at learning from it. The ability to capitalize on hard-won
    experience is a hallmark of the greatest organizations — the ones that
    are most adept at     turning knowledge into action, that are best at developing and implementing creative ideas, that engage in evidence-based (rather than faith- or fear-based) management, and that are populated with the best bosses.

    I'd love to hear any reactions or arguments you might have — there are already 16 comments and a good conversation over at HBR so you might want to check that out.

  • New Good Boss, Bad Boss Video Interview on Stanford GSB Site

    Paul Reist, Mehrdad Azim, Patrick Keating and Daphne Chang teamed-up to produce a new Good Boss,Bad Boss interview for the Stanford Graduate School of Business site.  I was most impressed with their commitment to quality, and it was fun to do because Paul asked great questions and Mehrdad did some cool video stuff where he filmed it outside and used a low camera angle.  This video and my recent AlwaysOn keynote provide a pretty good summary of the main ideas in the book.