How Much Can You Change Your Manager?

All of my best managers (when I've worked for someone else, as I've also managed a department, myself, in the past) have been from large companies. My worst was from a very small, family run insurance brokerage (my first job ever).

At the insurance brokerage, the woman running the office had the audacity to expect the mostly female front office employees to run to the supermarket to shop for, and then head into the kitchen to make lunch for, the entire office. Everyone was assigned kitchen/lunch duty one day each week.

This was back in the 1980's, and I'm not quite sure if it was even legal (most of the back office employees were male insurance underwriters, and the policy processing office, the front office, was all female, so it just screamed gender stereotype!).

I just up and quit that job, but to this day, just could not believe it. I guess the mother hen, who ran the family business, wanted her two male sons, who were the insurance underwriters, to get fed like mom cooked it herself, or something.

At large companies, everything is run so much more professionally, with managers being put through serious executive training (and it shows, too!).

The moral of the story? Run for your life from "small fry" type employers, because while not all have bad managers, they are also a bit more under the PR radar (the news media do not always pick up on small offices, just large and publicly traded companies that actually care about PR).

Side note: Both sons were medically obese, by the way. So much for the mandatory fresh-cooked roast beef lunch menu.

Also, there's a good book out called "First, Break All the Rules" by Marcus Buckingham, of Gallup Organization fame. It's all about how the "best" managers lead their teams.

A very well-liked former HR manager (as in popular with all the employees) recommended the book during an exit interview, and so of course, I picked up a copy. Grrrrrreat read! All serious managers ought to read it, as it's based on polling data of what makes great managers great.

Never again will I ever work for a "bad" manager when there are so many good ones out there (including my current one, thankfully).

Angie Koutrotsios of IL 12:49AM November 17, 2009