Sound odd? I once had a manager come into my office griping and whining about the performance of his supervisors. He was constantly catching up because of others’ performance. I put the onus on him. I told him “you’ll never get a higher level of performance from your people than that level of performance you are willing to accept”. It took him awhile, but he finally figured out, with a little prodding, that he needed to be involved, hands on and most of all, aware of the performance of his people at all times. He needed to set those levels. He needed to communicate those levels and set goals. He needed to implement ways to measure the performance of his department.
That same manager came into my office another time with a major problem. We had an open supervisor position for which a worker thought he was being passed over for consideration. This employee was about to leave the company because he felt slighted. I asked the manager if he wanted me to talk to the individual, whom I admit was a key individual we didn’t want to lose. I asked the person if there was a problem and he repeated to me what the manager had said, that he felt he was being passed over. After the employee finished, I asked him a couple questions. First, was he prepared to have his performance measured by the crew he would be supervising? He laughed and replied ‘Hell no!”. Second, I asked him if, since his staff was so obviously underqualified in his perspective, was he prepared to take full responsibility for their evaluation, dismissal and replacement? His answer was a more emphatic “No!”. My response? “Well, that’s what a supervisor does and that’s what will be expected of this position”. He left my office with a smile on his face that looked as if he had escaped hell.
When you look at our Washington politicians, what do you think? Does your stomach turn and you feel nauseous? Do you feel they should all be fired? Ok, what are you willing to do to make that happen. Politicians in this republic are supposed to work for us, but because we have allowed government to grow to the point it has, we are beginning to see the oppression when politicians have their way. What are you prepared to do?
REMEMBER: You’ll never get a higher level of performance from those who work for you than that level you accept from them. We are not like my employee. We are the supervisor. WE are responsible.