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LEADERSHIP SEEDS A 'FREE' MINI-WEBINAR each month with Dr. Rick on a Listening Leadership topic plus Q&A session
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2010 |
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WELCOME LEADERS!
Duck.....Here comes the seagull Manager again!
The word "micromanager" used to be the worst non-expletive that was uttered behind the bosses back. Unfortunately, today, more and more "seagull" managers are swooping into organizations.
Dr. Travis Bradberry points out the costs that the seagull
manager causes.
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SEAGULL MANAGERS CAN LEAVE A MESS Seagull managers interact with their employees only when a fire needs to be put out. Even then, they move in and out so hastily -- and put so little thought into their approach -- that they make bad situations worse by frustrating and alienating those who need them the most.
As companies flatten in response to the struggling economy, they are gutting management layers and leaving behind managers with more autonomy, greater responsibility and more people to manage. That means they have less time and less accountability for focusing on the primary purpose of their job -- managing people.
Humorous metaphors aside, seagull managers have a profoundly negative impact upon the health of those working for them. Researchers in London followed 6,442 British civil servants for more than eight years to see if bad bosses had any effect upon their employees' physical health. Their findings were disturbing. "Seagull-type" manager behaviors were significantly linked to incidence of employee coronary heart disease, even after the researchers removed the effects of conventional risk factors such as age, cholesterol level, body mass, smoking habits and physical activity. Employees who worked for a seagull manager were 30 percent more likely to develop coronary heart disease.
In the U.S., seagull managers are also wreaking havoc, and they aren't just eroding people's health; they're costing their employers money. National polls by the Gallup Organization and Development Dimensions International have found that 32 percent of people spend at least 20 hours a month complaining about their boss, 35 percent of people have a tough time communicating with their boss, and just 21 percent of people would be willing to take their boss' job. Employers across the country are suffering annual losses in excess of $360 billion because of low productivity from employee job dissatisfaction.
Even the good guys can succumb to seagull tendencies once promoted into management. Consider Scott Adams, the wildly successful creator of the Dilbert comic strip. Last year, after more than 20 years of poking fun at management culture, Adams decided to try his hand at managing a restaurant he had co-owned for years from a safe distance. Adams' foray into the rough-and-tumble world of management was humbling. At least Adams, unlike most bosses, was open about his shortcomings, "I'm quite sure I've succumbed to ... flying in every so often and dumping on everything." Indeed. A seagull manager is born every minute.
It's easy to spot a seagull manager when you're on the receiving end of their airborne dumps, but the manager doing the squawking is often unaware of this behavior's negative impact. And they aren't the only ones. In the vast majority of organizations, senior leadership is unschooled in the profoundly negative impact seagull managers are having upon the bottom line. The very individuals with the authority to alter the course of company culture lack the facts that would impel them to do so.
People may join companies, but they will leave bosses. No one influences an employee's morale and productivity more than his or her supervisor. It's that simple. Yet, as common as this knowledge may seem, it clearly hasn't been enough to change the way that managers and organizations treat people. Few companies recognize the degree to which managers are the vessels of a company's culture, and even fewer work diligently to ensure that their vessels hold the knowledge and skills that motivate employees to perform, feel satisfied and love their jobs. Here's to the hope that you won't be spending your days in the shadow of a seagull manager.
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JESSICA JACKLEY, CO-FOUNDER KIVA Seven years ago, Jessica Jackley heard a speech by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh who had developed the idea of microcredit: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. She says, "I was so completely blown away by the idea that I quit my job, dropped everything and moved to East Africa to help." In late 2005 she co-founded Kiva.org with Matt Flannery.
Named as one of the top ideas in 2006 by the New York Times Magazine and called "revolutionary" by the BBC, Kiva (www.kiva.org) lets internet users lend as little as $25 to specific developing world entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history, and today facilitates over $1M dollars each week from lenders to entrepreneurs across over 185 countries. Kiva uses a peer-to-peer model in which lenders sort through profiles of potential borrowers -- be they a farmer in Cambodia, a pharmacist in Sierra Leone, or a shopkeeper in Mongolia -- and make loans to those they find most appealing. The minimum loan is $25, and the interest rate is 0%. The repayment rate for loans is more than 98%, Jackley says, and since the group was founded almost 700,000 people have pledged $128 million in loans to more than 325,000 people. Jackley's latest project is ProFounder, a new platform that helps small businesses in the United States access startup funding through community involvement.
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LEADERSHIP QUOTE
"Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation
determines what you do. ~ Lou Holtz
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