Why does my staff hate me?

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If you’ve ever managed people and (like me) are somewhat empathic, you’ve had this experience: you walk into the office, and you can feel the waves of disgruntlement radiating from your staff. You’re not sure why or what happened, but they’re grumpy.  If it were just one or two of them, you could easily brush it off.  But instead it seems that the cranky fairy visited your department and liberally sprinkled his gift around.

So you pull someone (in my case, usually one of my managers or senior folks) into your office and ask.  Maybe said someone just glowers and says “nothing,” or maybe the conversation goes something like this:

Me: So what’s up around here?

Someone: I don’t think people are happy.

Me: Do you know why?

Someone: They’re not happy about <something you probably did, said, or asked them to do>.

The first time I had one of these conversations, I was honestly bewildered.  I had no idea why it seemed like my staff suddenly hated me.  Sure, there were some times that I did things to which a grumpy response was inevitable, but what I’m talking about here was boss-hating out of left field.  I’ve developed some theories as to why this happens:

  • You (the boss) represent the establishment. If your firm or company is doing something that they don’t particularly like, you are sometimes perceived as the immediate representative of The Man.  I find this is more common with new direct reports or folks who don’t know you well enough to know your motivations yet.
  • The “heart” of your department feels hurt. This doesn’t happen with every team, but there are often one or two employees who are the “heart” of the team (think Kaylee Frye on Firefly).  However this person feels is how the rest of the team will feel. And something happened to make this person unhappy.
  • You did something wrong. Or at least you did something that made them grumpy and you didn’t realize it at the time you did it.

So how do you deal with these situations?

  • It’s tough to be part of “the establishment,” but you can’t get away from that to some extent, since you are your team’s main point of contact for the Powers That Be.  If you realize this is going on, reassure your team that you’ll fight for their best interests, and work on building relationships with them so that they realize that you’re not The Man.
  • It’s pretty easy to deal with your team’s “heart” if you get along well with him or her.  You can take him out for a cup of coffee, find out what’s going on, and address the issue.  If you don’t get along with him, however (and I’ve had both situations when I’ve been a manager), you’ll have to slog through more emotional muck before you can get down to addressing the issue.   It won’t be quick or easy, though, and you might have to just wait for the current situation to blow over before working on building your relationship with him.  I’ll bet you didn’t realize that you’d become part shrink when you became a manager, eh?
  • I have a very simple formula that I follow when I’ve done something wrong or sub-optimal: own up to it, apologize for it, and take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  Trying to shift blame or defend your actions to your already pissed-off team will only exacerbate the crankiness and undermine their trust for you.  Find out what you did wrong, take responsibility, apologize, and fix it.

I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface here; what situations have I missed?  How do you handle it when your team seems to suddenly hate you?

My job as a manager

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Thor, the god of Norse mythology. "Thor's...
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When you think about it, management is really a necessary evil.  Oh, sure, I happen to weirdly like it and have been accused of having a talent for it, but it’s really unfortunate that we need as much management as we do.

Just think about it.  When your team or company is small enough, you don’t really need managers.  Each person in the room knows that they need to simply get “stuff” done in order to make the team or company work.  If they’re good enough at that, your company grows, and that’s when you need managers.

Why do you need managers? Coordination and resources.  My job as a manager isn’t to be the almighty powerful lord of my domain (even though sometimes it’s just fun to act like that to see how quickly my team calls me on it.  The best teams take less than 10 seconds.).  My job as a manager is to be a resource and the coordinator  for my team so that they can get the real “stuff” done.  In other words, the power is actually theirs, not mine.

What does this look like (you KNOW I’m going to do a bulleted list, don’t you?)?  So glad you asked! 🙂

  • Understand what they do. It’s pretty darn tough to act as a coordinator and resource when you haven’t the foggiest notion what they do all day.  I’m not saying you need to be a pain and look over their shoulders constantly, but you need to have a grasp of what their day-to-day jobs look like and what short-term (and long-term) goals they’re working towards.
  • Get out of the way. In trying to get things coordinated and achieve your mandates, it’s very easy to get in your own way (and in the way of your team).  When push comes to shove, you have to chat with them and then, well, trust them to do their jobs. Yes, your butt is on the line for their work, but that’s why you get paid the big bucks, right?  If you put yourself in the way by demanding constant meetings, updates, etc. (basically, being a micromanage-y PITA), “stuff” just won’t get done.
  • Give them what they need. One of your most important jobs as a manager is to give your team the resources that they need.  Basically, your job is to smooth the path in order to make their jobs as easy as possible.  Sometimes that takes the form of covering for one of them during a family emergency, or dealing with political BS, or bringing in caffeine or a V8 after a late night. Basically, you’re never, ever “too good” to do something that helps one of them get their job done.
    • “But Jenn,” you whine, “I’m not a secretary.”  No, you’re not.  And if you’re blessed enough to have the god or goddess that an admin is, maybe your job will look less “menial” because you don’t have to do as much detailed coordination. But if you don’t have one, suck it up and do the work.
  • Show appreciation publicly.  If you want to make sure your team is demoralized, go ahead and do a private, “Good girl, now get back in your box,” when one of them truly goes above and beyond.  Send an email to your VP, or announce it on the wiki, or use a formal feedback channel to let your company know just how amazing she was.  She might act embarrassed (and there are those employees who don’t want public kudos, so get to know her or check with her first before your stand on the rooftops and shout, but note that “Oh no, you don’t have to do that,” isn’t a refusal), but there is a very wide chasm between public appreciation and private, and employees are aware of that.
  • Show appreciation and disappointment privately. Standing on the rooftops isn’t appropriate for every employee action, so giving a constant stream of feedback is incredibly important.  Don’t ever wait for review time to tell him that he has done well or poorly.  Each day is an opportunity to say, “Nice one with the foo case,” or “In the future, can you make sure that you say goodbye before you hang up the phone?”

I’m sure I’ve missed what a lot of you do, but this is how I see my job?  What have I missed?  What can you add that will make me (and others) a better manager?

Moving to Seattle!

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What?  You’re moving to Seattle?  When?  What happened?

Yes; my husband and I are moving to Seattle.  We’re flying out late on the 26th of July.  Amazon made him an offer we couldn’t refuse.

What’s happening to you?  Your job?

I’ll be looking for a job in Seattle.  And friends.

Where will you be living?

We’ll be in corporate housing near downtown for a few months while we attempt to sell our house & look for another apartment.

Why didn’t you tell me before now?

I’m telling you now, aren’t I?  🙂  I wanted to wait for the big announcement at my department’s meeting at work.

Can I see you before you leave?

Probably, but get in touch with me soon!

I live in Seattle!  When can we get together?

I’d love to see you!  (Assuming you aren’t an ax murderer.)  Drop me an email at jennsteele (at) gmail (dot) com, and we’ll get together sometime after August 1st (since I’ll be a crazy person before then).

How to get good service from your Help Desk or Support Center

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Help Desk
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I was going to make this a snarky post on how to get bad service from IT, but then I realized that it might actually be more useful to write this in a more positive light.  Also, I actually had positive things to say.

So you’re someone who has a computer problem at a company, and you have some sort of computer support/MIS/IT department that you need to help you.  Here’s what to do to get the best service both now and for your problems in the future:

  • Follow the process.  Maybe it seems really silly to call into the Help Desk line rather than just walk up to the systems administrator (since you just did tequila shots with him last night), but I really mean that you should call in instead.  Why do you need to follow the process?
    • If it’s a system-wide problem, having all the calls come into one place will allow it to be diagnosed & fixed faster.  If 4 different people get 4 different calls about the same problem and we’re all in different offices, we’re not aware that it’s system-wide until several minutes or hours later.
    • Your buddy in the IT department might not be the best person to ask about your question.  Your drinking pal the sysadmin usually can’t fix your Word problem, and the IT Director probably doesn’t know her way around common Citrix problems the way the Help Desk does.
    • You can make sure your problem gets documented properly.  When I ran IT departments and had to handle a user’s issue directly, I rarely remembered to document it in the ticket tracking system.  Unfortunately, that meant that the next time that user had that problem, someone else had to take the same troubleshooting steps I did.  If it’s a problem you have all the time, you also WANT your problem to be documented properly, since it’s more likely to be taken very seriously if you can prove a pattern via the documentation trail.
    • Walking straight up to IT & support folks tends to tick them off.  They might be in the middle of a different user’s problem, or they might be held to a certain hold time standard.  Your walk-up interrupts them and probably annoys them as well.
  • Call the support line WHILE you’re having the problem (and you’re at your computer!).  Calling after you’ve already moved on or–even worse–calling when you’re not in front of the computer removes almost all the tools that the support folks will need in order to diagnose and fix the issue.  This is another reason not to walk directly up to the IT folk; we need you to access your computer so we can figure out what’s going on!
  • Call the support line yourself.  Don’t have your boss/secretary/wife/dog call for you.  Maybe you feel like your boss will have more clout & get things done better or faster, but it’s the same as the last point–we still need you to be at your computer.  And if you’re the boss, you should note that your secretary can’t fix it for you if he’s not at your computer.  Your wife will make us laugh but probably won’t help us fix it, either.  And your dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs.
  • Be nice. I know you’re annoyed that your @!#&* document has @#$%^&* frozen yet again, but cursing at the person on the other end of the phone won’t motivate them to fix it any faster.  Please keep in mind that geeks are people, too, and treat them politely and professionally.  If you’re rude, chances are we’ll fix your problem this time, but you might find yourself ringing to voice mail a bit more often, since the support folks will be more likely to jump to answer the calls from the users who are nice to them.  If you did happen to lose your temper, donuts make good apology tools.  Just sayin’…
So what have I missed?  What are other sure-fire ways to get good service from your support geeks?

What a CEO should be thinking about

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I had the opportunity recently to meet with the inimitable Donna Payne, CEO of PayneGroup.  I have been a groupie of Donna’s since she changed my world by talking about PowerPoint metadata back in 2000 when I was doing applications at a law firm.  Since then, we’ve been social media buddies and even co-presented on using social media to the vendors at ILTA ’09.  I was pretty thrilled when she made time in her busy day to chat with me.

What became very clear during our conversation was how focused Donna is on what I can only describe as “CEO stuff”.  Even though she has successfully created a premier company in the legal space that writes top-shelf metadata, formatting, and numbering software, does high-level consulting, and provides some of the best training around, she’s not just sitting around and trying to make sales.  Here’s why I think her brain is in the right place:

  • She cares for her team.  A LOT.  She has a yoga instructor come in once a week to help with stress (and it’s just fun!).  She specifically cited my On Burnout post as something she diligently attempts to avoid having anyone on her team experience.  And I think her caring has paid off–most of her senior team has been with her more than a decade.  That’s something like 30,000 years in the software space, I think.
  • She sees her company’s potential weaknesses and attacks them before they become REAL weaknesses.  This goes along with watching her team for burnout; she’s also watching for any potential internal or external weaknesses so that she can address them quickly.  I like to call this “preventive maintenance”, and I’ll bet that it saves her company a ton of cash in the long run.
  • She is constantly thinking about her company’s next steps. Donna is thinking 10+ years into the future of her company, and is taking action right now in order to bring that future about.  She’s not content to just have one of the best companies out there–she’s looking for what’s next, and she’s not afraid to take risks in order to get there.
  • She’s actively thinking about the industry’s next steps.  Even though a lot of law firms are scared of the cloud and might not want to touch non-Microsoft applications for a long time, Donna is actively thinking about them and planning for when the industry becomes less hesitant.
In a nutshell, this is what I think a CEO should be thinking about: her people, preventing potential weaknesses, the company’s next steps, and the industry’s next steps.  I believe that this is why PayneGroup has lasted since 1994, weathering the dot-com bust and the most recent recession.  I look forward to seeing what Donna will do with PayneGroup to take it through the next few decades!

My completely nitpicky pet peeves (humor)

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Quotes. Made in notepad
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Dear fellow geeks, geek leaders, and other random people who read this blog:

This is not a useful post.  This post, in fact, will show you how the inside of my brain works.  It can be a scary, scary place sometimes.  Also?  This isn’t a rant.  This is just nitpicky.  Also probably brought on by lack of sleep.  And it’s supposed to be funny, not cranky.  So if you read it as cranky, oops.

Here goes.  I hate it when you…

  • Change the subject line of the email.  I have multiple reasons for this:
    1. I don’t read subject lines.  I also don’t read chapter titles, article titles, etc.  I don’t know why.  It’s weird.  My husband makes fun of me for it.  So I’m not actually going to SEE what you put in there for my cute little eyes to see.
    2. It breaks my email threading.  I have a strange obsessive behavior that makes me adore my threaded email conversations.  I cuddle up with them at night (no, not really.  If you’re like me and don’t read titles, please go back and note the “humor” thing up top.).
  • Make plurals with apostrophes.  Just please don’t do it.  Unless you like watching me twitch.  In which case you should go ahead and do it, but don’t expect me to buy you a beer.  Ever.
  • Misspell Latin phrases.  If you can’t spell it, don’t use it.  You don’t sound erudite, you just make me twitch.  See previous bullet point about twitching.
  • Hug me.  There are a few non-family members who I don’t mind hugs from (Whose first names pretty much always start with “J”.  No, I don’t know why.), but otherwise, there will be twitching.  But this one doesn’t get you exempted from the beer buying, so this one is a lesser evil in the Jenn hierarchy.
  • Correct my order of punctuation and quotation marks.  Yes, I know I do it “wrong” for American English.  No, I don’t care.  Pthththt.
So, gentle readers, what are your completely ridiculous pet peeves?  (Other than being called “gentle readers”, that is.  I think that one’s weird, but I’m still leaving it in there.)

Dear Job Applicant: Your résumé is driving me insane

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Un-suckify your resumeDear Job Applicants:

Your résumés are driving me nuts.  So nuts that I’ve created a list:

  • You don’t tailor your résumé to my job posting.  If my job posting says you have to know marketing and be able to teach, the word “marketing” should actually SHOW UP on your résumé.  If I specify that you have to know how to administer Compellent SANs, guess what I want to see on your résumé ?
  • For the love of everything, get someone to proofread your résumé.  I read one today that said, “References can be refurbished upon request.”  Seriously?  Seriously!?!?!?!?!
  • I really don’t care about your job responsibilities that much.  Your accomplishments, sure.  Your responsibilities, not really.  I want to know what you did.  Did you manage a network?  Did you manage humans?  Did you manage a budget?  How many?  How much?  How big?  I’m reading to see if you have what it takes to manage my network, humans, and budget.
  • Please tell me why you want to do this job.  Especially if it’s an unusual job.  For example, we hire for a role at HubSpot known as “Inbound Marketing Consultant.”  And, honestly, it’s not a job like any other job.  As a result, if I can’t figure out from your résumé or cover letter WHY you want this job, I have to waste time in the interview figuring out two things (below), and I HATE wasting time.
    1. Do you have any idea what this job is?
    2. Given your understanding of the job, why do you want it?
  • Please have some clue what’s on your résumé.  Seriously, people, if you don’t know what’s there and I’ve only spent 30 seconds skimming it, we’re in a world of hurt.
  • Please put complete information on your résumé.  I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve had where people say, “It’s not on my résumé, but…”  Well, then, your résumé isn’t complete, now, is it?
I’m sure there are more, but I have to go back to skimming résumés.  Can someone please have mercy on me?

Image courtesy of CharlotWest

I Can’t Keep You Fixed

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I can't keep you fixedYeah, I know. Your job sucks sometimes. Servers crash, users complain, you are looking to your next job but haven’t quite gotten there yet, etc. Or maybe you’re having some troubles at home, not sleeping, etc.

I promise you that I will do my best, as your manager/leader/director/chief whatsit officer, to make your job better.

I will shift your workload, give you plum projects, take you out for beer, approve tons of personal time, etc.  I will do everything in my power to make you happy and productive, because I know that happy workers are better at their jobs (except lawyers.  No, really–I don’t have the citation on hand, but I read a study in business school that said so.).

But, honestly, I can’t keep you fixed.

I will protect you from politics, and defend you like a mother bear defending her cubs.  I will fight for your requests even if I don’t necessarily completely agree (but do see the merit).  I will joke with you, cry with you, and get angry alongside you.

But, still, I can’t keep you fixed.

As adults in the workplace, sometimes we need to take responsibility for our own happiness.  Should we fight for what we want? Absolutely.  Should we go to our managers with our complaints/problems? Yes.

But it’s not their job to keep us fixed.  It’s our job to fix ourselves.  If I’m going to my manager with a problem, I should also have some ideas of solutions.  Maybe they’re not tenable solutions, but “I’m not going to do that” isn’t a solution–it’s creation of even more problems.

So yeah, jobs suck sometimes. And as a manager, I do my best to keep my team happy.  But as a team member myself, I need to be cognizant that there is mutual responsibility for the fixing.  I can’t keep you fixed, just like my manager can’t keep me fixed.  But together, I think, we can probably do a decent job of getting through the day.

**Note to fellow grammar geeks: I know I switched personal pronouns, but it sounded really cranky when I didn’t…

Photo Courtesy of DaveOnFlickr.

When You Shouldn’t Hire “The Best”

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“We always hire the best.”

“The people who work here are the best people in the world.”

“We never use the phrase ‘good enough’ in our hiring.”

I’ve seen countless companies completely mess themselves up by sticking to some sort of resolve to “hire the best” without thinking it through.  They hire the coolest, brightest, smartest, and quickest people and then have morale and retention problem that they just can’t figure out.  They leave out one essential piece of hiring “the best”–they forget that they need the best for the job.  So they end up with…

  • Brilliant technologists who are miserable working a Help Desk phone
  • Great managers who are lousy consultants
  • Great user support folks who are cranky systems administrators (this one is hard to tell, since systems administrators tend to be cranky anyhow)
  • Great applications people who are bored trainers

I’ve found that behavioral interviewing can really separate the best (in general) from the best for the job.  Here are my favorite questions:

  • In job x, you’ll often experience situation y.  Can you tell me about a time when you were in a similar situation and how you reacted?
  • How do you handle it when you feel like you’re at the end of your rope, and what sorts of situations make you feel like that?
  • I’ve made mistakes that could turn your hair grey to hear them.  Tell me about how you handled one of the worst mistakes you’ve ever made (I don’t make them tell me the details of the mistake).
  • How would you handle <some situation they’ll experience on the job>?
  • What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done in work or in life?  What made it so cool?

Their answers to behavioral questions will help you rapidly see that sometimes a completely awesome candidate just isn’t the best for the job.  And honestly, one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a hiring manager is to let someone’s degrees/qualifications/personality blind you to a bad fit.

So how about you?  How do you distinguish between to “the best” and “the best for the job”?

Photo courtesy of Rachael Voorhees