Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strengths

This recent govexec article is fascinating.  Not only for the content of the article, but also for the comments.  It is pretty easy to recognize who is bargaining unit and who is not within a few seconds.  Especially the guy who says "unions have no place in public service."  I'm just guessing he isn't the local president.  He also probably doesn't spend a lot of time with the guy saying "it has everything to do with poor management."  So how did public service unions and managers get to the point of a Seinfeld inspired Festivus-styled airing of grievances in a comment section of an article?  

I do not know either poster I mentioned above, but I can probably safely assume they do not have the same perspective on union-management relations.  However, that does not mean they cannot work together and actually accomplish things.  Sometimes, management and the union may have different motives for their opinions but the opinions might actually be the same.  Take this article about the TSA for example.  AFGE wants to add 6,000 TSA screeners.  If I were a manager in an airport with 2-hour lines at the check-point, I'd probably appreciate a few more screeners too.  Of course, management will accuse the union of just trying to get more dues-paying members.

How does this tie into "don't manage like this" examples? I've worked with managers that will spend more time composing an email to the local union rep sitting five feet away than actually talking to the person.  Call me old fashioned, but I think everybody can agree that context can be misinterpreted when reading an email.  Especially an email to/from somebody when you're already questioning that person's motivation for even sending the email in the first place.  I had a co-worker email back-and-forth with a union rep for over 15 minutes about the arrival time of an employee that was a few minutes late for work.  And each email got more and more argumentative.  Email is not only impersonal it also makes it easier for the sender to be a jerk.  Unless you're a total sociopath, it should be difficult to be rude to somebody in person.  That's why it is so easy to hang up on a telemarketer but so difficult to try to explain to the Salvation Army bell ringer why you don't have change for him.  

I know there is a manager out there reading this saying "Hey, why not point out what the union rep is doing wrong?"  Well this blog isn't called "How to be a better union rep".  It's call Don't Manage Like This!  Besides manager out there reading this, if you weren't so defensive maybe you would have a better relationship with your union representatives.  I would love to think that managers are always correct but based on my experiences, I am not actually myopic enough to believe that.

Gargoyles vs. Concierges

I had a foreign language requirement in college so I enrolled in a German 101 class. German was not as popular as some of the other languages in the university so the department was fairly intimate. After having the same professor for German 101 and 102, I decided I would like to continue my German studies because he was really that great of a professor. He often would grade a little easier than he needed, he would grant extensions for questionable excuses, and he would always go out of his way to ask about life outside of his classroom. I asked him after a German 201 class about his willingness to be so helpful to his students. He replied that most people are either gatekeepers or doormen. He went on to explain that a gatekeeper will force you to run through a gauntlet to get ahead, deservedly so or not. Often the gatekeeper had a poor experience to get where he is at so he feels the need to make you suffer as well. In contrast, the doorman is there to open a door for you and to help you go through. A doorman does this because he realizes that he didn't get to where he was at on his own. And to pay back those who helped him, he pays it forward to the next person coming along. My German professor explained that he tries to always be a doorman.

As I've explained in previous posts, most of us have toiled under bad leadership at some point.  But that is no reason to be a bad manager when it is your turn. Don't be a gatekeeper. Job security is one of the benefits to government employment. I mean, it can be damn near impossible to get rid of us! But that also leads to stale management that swears that it took them 25 years to get promoted and they had to kayak across the Potomac to get to work before the metro made it easy for today's lazy gen-xers millennials! So instead of opening doors to help people walk through them, they turn into scary gargoyles and try to punish you for daring to try to advance.

My German professor went on to explain that he knew I would never be very good at German, but he also knew I was just taking his class as a means to an end. Rather than being unnecessarily difficult he made sure that I took his class seriously and held open the door for me and thousands of grateful students.

So be the doorman, you'll be a better manager and you'll get to wear a cooler hat too.

The Tax Collectors and the Prostitutes

Demagoguery directed at bureaucrats is not new.  From Rush Limbough to the Bible, government workers are not always held in high esteem.  The purpose of my blog is not to advance the narrative that government employees are bad, lazy, overpaid leeches.  However, I will give you real life examples of poor leadership.  There are all kinds of books, speakers, and yes, blogs, that will tell you how to manage.  I will specifically give you examples of how NOT to manage.

I hope to provide an interesting and humorous perspective into life on the inside of government management.  Follow along for stories about Christmas community fund raisers gone awry, the definition of retired-on-duty, and many more!