How To Be A Good Boss

1034 Words5 Pages
Kathleen M. Chirico M02-1 How To Be A Good Boss In A Bad Economy by Robert Sutton Robert Sutton suggests 4 areas that need to be addressed with your employees: 1) Predictability-Give people as much information as you can about what will happen and when. 2) Understanding-Explain why the changes you’re implementing are necessary-and don’t assume you need to do so only once 3) Control-Take a bewildering challenge and break it down into “small win” opportunities. 4) Compassion-Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Mr. Sutton outlined the first 3 remedies in a 1987 paper that was inspired the great and lousy bosses he observed over the deep recession in the midwestern United States. Some years later, one of his colleagues’s helped him recognize the fourth as a distinct and equally crucial antidote to organizational stress. Starting with predictability. To give people as much information as you can about when it will happen and when. There is so much to be said for preparing people. To work in an organization for many years, dedicate yourself to the organization and be laid off with no notice is as shocking as it comes. If you, as a boss, prepare your employees that there will be layoffs, when it will probably happen, they will be able to start to prepare themselves for the inevitable. That doesn’t mean they will be happy you told them they are losing their jobs, but the shock value will be much less, they will be prepared, and they may even have time to possibly line up another job. When I worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they had not had layoffs for 100 years. They started to prepare us in 2002 that the division we work (Merchandising) was not performing, the Museum was in big trouble and they were most likely going to have layoffs starting in our division. Shock and anger were the first reactions, and then reality set in.
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