Quote:
Originally Posted by 2ArmBands
To be honest I had you pegged as the exact opposite to your post above. I would of guessed over working your employees, paying yourself handsomely, not caring about people’s problems etc… I based this purely on how dismissive you were to other management styles and assumed you were a “my way or highway” type.
The only thing I would like to challenge about your post is this. Just because someone is driven by career/business growth doesn’t necessarily mean they need to sacrifice their work/life balance to do so. It also doesn’t mean that they are out for profits and to squeeze their employees or treat them poorly. In many cases I think people love to see themselves play a role in their coworkers growth. It might be monetary or not. Some might say that in itself is selfish but I view it as win-win.
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Yes, and I don't like that. It can work well if you have a good manager, who is also a good person, who leads a life an underling would want to aspire to, but that combination of qualities within a manager coupled with a junior who both needs
and wants their guidance is incredibly rare. If we normalize mentoring from
every manager to
every subordinate, you inevitably end up with millions of manhours of unqualified people offering bad advice to people who don't want it and won't benefit from it. Also, you're going to get situations where the underling is more qualified to offer better advice to the manager because there's no reason that a higher position in a company means you are better equipped to offer life advice.
Managers are people, too. They should be willing to grow from all the people around them and vice versa. Managers who sit in their office helping guide the lives of people under them should probably just focus on whatever work helps the core business and leave the general life counseling to trained counselors. I don't like a power dynamic where because I'm in a higher role in a company I can gather the little people and bestow my superior knowledge upon them. I can bestow corporate knowledge and offer advice in a limited capacity like anybody else, but your average boss shouldn't be giving life advice in weekly/monthly one-one-ones.
The other thing is junior level people should not be burdening their superiors with life problems to the extent possible. I mean, if you're going through a divorce, please let me know if you'd like to share as that will affect your work and you're going to need some leeway for an extended period. I'll do what I can to help one human to another, but don't submit to me the way a patient does to a psychiatrist. That's inappropriate for both of us and I'm not qualified to help you in the way you may need.