Stupid Behaviors #8 & #9: “I Want to Be Your Friend” and Poor Judgment
This is part five in our series “11 Stupid Things That Managers Do to Mess Up Workplace Excellence.” So far we have gone over the first seven Stupid Behaviors of Managers:
- Inability to Control Emotions
- Impulsive Decisions
- Blaming Others
- It’s All About Me
- If You Think Today is Bad, Just Wait!
- Failure to Communicate
- Talk First, Listen Later
The next two Stupid Behaviors are I Want to Be Your Friend and Poor Judgment:
Stupid Behavior #8: I Want to Be Your Friend
One of the behaviors that gets managers into huge trouble is working hard to be friends with employees, or only doing things that they think people will like. While these managers may hint and hope that poor performance exhibited by an employee will change, they don’t have the courage to give honest, direct feedback for fear that the employee won’t like them.
Recently, we asked a supervisor if she had given feedback to an employee who was coming to work late and not meeting the standards of her job. This supervisor responded with, “No. I have not talked with her about her performance because we are good friends.”
We were dumbfounded. What kind of true friend would exhibit behaviors like chronic tardiness and poor performance, which would undermine her supervisor/friend’s ability to be successful in her role? Undermining your supervisor/friend’s success at work is a twisted characteristic of friendship.
Managers that yearn to be liked don’t understand that letting a friendship get in the way of identifying and handling a performance problem affects the entire team. When top performers see someone slacking and the boss not addressing the problem, they become demoralized, seeing the situation as not fair to them. Further, they see the boss as a coward held captive by the slacker. Over time, the manager who works hard to be liked by everyone ultimately ends up with few followers.
Stupid Behavior #9: Poor Judgment
If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What were you thinking?” chances are you’ve just experienced an example of poor leadership judgment. Examples of poor judgment include:
- Bad mouthing one employee in front of another
- Expressing negative thoughts about your boss, or organization
- Becoming emotionally involved with a direct report
- Displaying emotional outbursts
- Using foul language
Each one of the examples above is evidence of a manager who has typically done something they wish they could “do over.” Their actions reflect poorly on their judgment, especially when they won’t own the behavior and apologize for the damage done.
To learn more about the next, and final, two Stupid Behaviors, Tell Me Only What I Want to Hear and I Don’t Trust You, check back tomorrow and read the sixth installment in this blog series.
You may also like:
- Eleven Stupid Things Managers Do to Mess up Workplace Excellence (Intro)
- Stupid Behaviors #6 & #7: Failure to Communicate and Talk First, Listen Later
- Stupid Behaviors #4 & #5: “It’s All About Me” and “If You Think Today is Bad, Just Wait!”
Filed Under: Leadership, Peter's Blog on November 3rd, 2009
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