Remote: A fictional short-short story

An Honest Conversation Between Boss and Employee

Most people feel they can't tell their boss or supervisee what they really think. What might a completely honest conversation look like? That's my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

So You Think You Have a Bad Boss

A number of my clients said they have a bad boss. Upon probing, it's clear that some of them were right. But often, it's more complicated.

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I explore what may be going on with five kinds of "bad bosses."

Why Bosses Resist Giving Feedback

A Workover: An Employee is Tired of Not Getting Praised

A caller to my radio show was tired of not getting praise from her boss. The transcript of our conversation is my PsychologyToday.com article today.

In Defense of Employers and Business Owners

Most articles on the workplace advocate for the employee rather than the employer. Indeed, bosses are often portrayed as clueless, dishonest, and/or lazy.

Yet I often find myself siding with bosses and employers over workers.

Of course, that makes me unpopular with most readers, if only because there are more workers than bosses and business owners. But there's a reason I often side with the higher-ups: I believe in championing merit over egalitarianism.

Of course, some bosses get promoted undeservedly but, on average, they're smarter, harder-working, more of a self-starter and lower-maintenance. Most business owners take far more risk and work far longer hours than do most of their workers. And they create jobs.

True, there are a few zillionaire CEOs, who, if only for symbolic effect, probably should be taxed further. But obscene-earning executives are but the tiniest sliver of the manager/executive pie. Most managers, per hour, don't make much more than do worker bees. And whatever moderate extra pay they get is fair in light of management's extra responsibility, skills and degrees, and yes that, on average, they're smarter. Plus, few bosses expect to work just 40 hours a week. And when they work longer, unlike workers, they don't get a penny of overtime.

I feel even more for the boss and business owner when I read studies of millions of workers stealing from their employer in various ways. I'm not talking here about taking pencils or even a laptop. I'm talking about more expensive stealing. For example, large percentages of workers, on company time, play on Facebook, Amazon, and sports sites for hours every day, take sick days when they're not sick, and knowingly making false claims to get undeserved big money from the company or taxpayer.  It's impossible to measure the percentage of false and exaggerated claims but it's instructive that employee lawsuits have, from 1989-2009, the latest year measured, increased 400%(!)

A study by the Career Advisory Board found that while 72 percent of job seekers are confident they can present the skills needed for a job, just 15 percent of hiring managers have the skills to fill open positions.

So when workers demand more "rights," I don't feel inclined to join the sea of journalists who--in my mind, thoughtlessly--abandon even a pretense of neutrality in favor of trying to get workers what they want, even if that's, net, unfair to bosses, business owners, and society.

Journalists' linchpin principle should not be to advocate for the little guy. It should be to advocate for merit. Ultimately, that will do the most good.

(Some) Employers: Bah, Humbug!

Of course, some employers are great, better than most employees.

But today's today's installment in my USNews.com Bah series focuses on the baddies: Employers. Bah Humbug!

I Have More Sympathy for Bosses than for Supervisees

The media almost always takes the side of workers over the bosses. Witness the endless parade of books, articles, and TV shows, about bad bosses. Their supervisees, however, are usually painted as saintly.

In fact, on average, people become bosses because they are smarter and harder working. And what do they get:

• Often bosses must supervise less competent and less hard-working people, and their hands are tied in doing so. If praise and gentle suggestions don't improve a weak employee's performance, threats of union grievances and harassment claims often tie bosses' hands.

• Firing is often very difficult, requiring months or even years of painstaking documentation, after which significant risk still remains of a wrongful termination suit or of the surviving workers' morale declining from the loss of their pleasant if unproductive pal.

• Bosses are often caught in the middle between higher-ups demanding more productivity and unproductive supervisees already complaining of overwork.

• Not much more money. Unlike workers, who get overtime pay after 40 hours, managers are exempt, meaning they can (and often are expected to) work 50-60 hours a week but receive no overtime pay. And the increment in salary for being a boss is taxed at their highest rate, so, after taxes, unless they're a true big-wig, the improvement to their lifestyle is usually minimal,

If you're a boss, I want you to know that at least someone's on your side.