Page 125 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

112B RE-ENGAGE

positive and negative. Here are some of the survey comments from
employees who are obviously disengaged and suffering the effects of
working under poor direct managers:

: “A lot of the managers have technical backgrounds and rose through
the ranks, but they don’t have managerial skills or common sense
on how to treat people with respect. This is a daily problem.”
: “The lower-level managers and supervisors need additional train-
ing in management. Unfortunately, numerous excellent employees
leave after a short period of time due to a lack of motivation and
recognition.”
: “Some mid-level managers have been with the company a long
time but are not very effective leaders. Too often individuals pro-
moted to supervisory or mid-management positions are not skilled
at managing people or programs and take a passive approach to
dealing with problem employees or procedures.”
: “The firm has a major problem with middle management. People
are not trained in how to be effective managers and are not re-
warded or reprimanded for good or bad management skills; there-
fore, the people who work for poor managers are often stuck in a
bad position with no one to go to for help.”
: “Having worked at other law firms before, the environment can
be one where attorneys often view staff as second-class citizens.
Ninety-nine percent of the attorneys are nice people to work with
and show respect to all. No matter how much money an attorney
brings to the firm, he or she is not allowed to be an a**hole—it just
doesn’t work like that here.”

As you may have noticed, in several of these comments employ-
ees are not so much pointing the finger of blame at managers them-
selves, but at company leaders who have made the decision to pro-
mote them into supervisory positions in the first place, or have failed
to address their lack of management skills, either by confronting
their ineffectiveness, by coaching them, or by providing manage-
ment training.