Frankly, I think whether managers or employees get more breaks depends on the culture or the particular situation; I’ve seen a lot of employees get fired who didn’t deserve it and a lot of managers get fired who didn’t deserve it. There is often so much more going on than poor behavior (like politics)to determine whether someone stays or goes.

The point I was making (not well, apparently) is that we all have a role to play when someone isn’t performing as they should – even managers. I’ve risked my job to tell a manager (and a manager’s manager) about issues when nobody else would – because it’s the right thing to do even if I understand that others would rather tell everyone else how bad their manager is.

It seems from your opening post and comments that the redemption of bad managers is a higher pre-requisite than the redemption of bad employees. Why does it seem that bad managers are allowed to get away with much more, often, catastrophic! practices than bad employees. Yes we are all flawed human beings and we can all have had things go wrong in our lives from childhood up that can influence things right down to how we work. But! what about the place of personal responsibility? I have been looking at blogs for hours now about how to work with bad bosses and the majority seem to be about helping your boss to change and playing some kind of mental game with them.

Why does a boss or manager as is probably more the appropriate term as boss to me signifies owner of the company, why should more excuses and understanding bee given to them over lesser forms of employee? In fact the more I think about it the more ludicrous it seems that those under bad bosses should work towards their redemption. Yes, help a new boss/manager be encouraging, work diligently under them, but hey! a time must come when enough is enough! just as it will for managers over subordinates. You know I read on a blog that managerial consultants are still trying to figure out how bad managers retain their jobs. My answer is simple…because there is too much emphasis on trying to redeem them and change them instead of firing them. The problem is that people who hired them made a mistake and now they don’t know what to do and given the chance they, without recrimination they would fire them in a heartbeat.

Greg.

P.s While everyone was trying to understand my manager and work with them people suffered…and badly.

Oh, and there are lots of good managers too. We just don’t seem to get as emotionally worked up about them, and they don’t often make the press.

Then HR says “most people that leave a company do so becasue of their manager”. Nice. That comment really gives the employees that work for the bad boss a warm fuzzy feeling about their place in the overall organization. As luck would have it it looks like that boss may finally be seeing the light. Not becasue that “flawed human” is changing but the company is and now they’re scared and have no alliances or freinds on their side to turn to.

David R.

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2010/01/27/12710-a-midweek-look-at-the-independent-business-blogs.aspx

Wally Bock

I love your positive perspective. When I was younger, I worked a lot of jobs and had a lot of “bad” bosses. I couldn’t help but hate going to work. My attitude was always negative and usually resulted in an outward appearance…people knew I did not want to be there! The reason I love your perspective because it takes the negative out. When one changes their outlook from the beginning it changes their appearance and their eventual actions. Thank you for your outlook!