Stupid Manager Tricks #2 - "If I Was a Smart Manager . . ."

Back in the day, The Skeptical Entrepreneur worked in a regional back-office for one of the national "money center" banks, handling administrative, inter-bank records. The younger, not-quite-as-skeptical Skeptical Entrepreneur was saddled with a natural blonde for a department manager.

One fine day, TSE was summoned for a counseling/coaching session (another Stupid Manager Trick) with the department head, which counseling session was held, not in the department head's office, but in TSE's second-rank supervisor's* office (TSE is still scratching his head, fully ten years later, trying to figure that out).

It was at that counseling/coaching session that the natural-blonde department head uttered the deathless phrase, "If I was a smart manager . . ." TSE managed to restrain himself from retorting, "If you were a smart manager, people would say, 'That [department head], she's one smart manager.'"

It is unfortunate that so many managers feel the need to advertise verbally what geniuses they are, when their actions (which, proverbially, speak much louder) advertise just what idiots they are. Managers should lead by example, and should be aware that they are always - ALWAYS, and ever! - under scrutiny and evaluation by their subordinates. Like it or  not, think it is fair or not, feel that they should be above evaluation by the great unwashed hoi polloi or not, think that because they have gotten the MBA (or, in the case of academia, the Ph.D.) that they have outgrown, or been outpromoted from having to worry about evaluations or not, the hard fact is that managers - all leaders, for that matter - are constantly under scrutiny by their subordinates. It is part of the job of leading.

Like it or not, leaders constantly face the challenge to re-establish their credibility as leaders, from the people that they expect to follow them. If TSE's natural-blonde department head had actually been a smart manager, her actions would have proclaimed that she was a smart manager, much louder, and to much broader agreement, than her words ever either a) could have done, or b) would have needed to do.

It is a lesson that managers would do well to heed.

*To adopt, laboriously, a military metaphor, if the team leader can be likened to a squad leader, then the second-rank supervisor would be the platoon leader, and the department head would be the company commander.