80% of us hate our boss: what to do | Hacker News Reader

80% of us hate our boss: what to do

blogs.jobdig.com

4 pointsglhoffman4 comments

As someone who's about to start a job as a "boss", I'm going to take "Even if we went to business school, that was two years spent, long-long ago." to heart. Wishing for an article like "80% of your employees hate you: what to do"

Management is a social activity, so you will have to embrace social interaction. Rule #1 is to actively encourage feedback. The difficult part is not getting upset but acting on opportunity when you are told where you screwed up. You'll get over it. It will take some time (6-12 months) before people will be comfortable with telling you what they think, and they will start with small things. Make sure to follow up on these by either addressing or making it obvious that feedback was given serious consideration. Everybody likes beign listened to. Be prepared for the first 6-12 months beign very awkward. It's ok.

One trick I learned from my boss is to ask people two questions: "how could we make this better?" and "how could we make this worse?". It's important to ask both questions as this creates proper frame around conversation. It also avoids the whole conversation beign 100% "negative".

I'm in 20%. At the day job my boss is great as are two guys higher up (not sure about #4 and above - too hard to reach those). They are not without their issues but they are listening to feedback and keep improving. I usually fill detailed feedback for them each year and follow up in person (for the first two guys in the chain of command) to make sure the message was read right. This year I found very little to criticize them for, which is quite unusual for a crank like me.

In the past I had couple of so-so managers at the same place and our collective feedback saw them managed out of their roles back to what they were good at. But this is the product of workplace where feedback is being listened to, if you don't work in a place like this your options maybe limited.

If you want to change the place where you work and your boss (not leave but make it different), I recommend "The Possibilities of Organization" book

http://www.amazon.com/Possibilities-Organization-Barry-Oshry...

it will help you inderstand what's going on in the heads of your managers and why they act like they do. I was thoroughly moved by this book.

Fire him!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com