Managing Leadership^®

Many managers would prefer being able to devote their full attention to the administration of non-human assets and factors in their businesses. These are easier to understand and manipulate, and they usually don’t give you grief about it. But the fact is, most of the grief “human assets” give their managers is of the latter’s own making.

As short while ago, Inc.com reported the results of a study which showed that “bad behavior” is caused by problems with work-life balance issues, and is not prevented by standard disciplinary measures. To be honest, such results suggest errors in research design and data interpretation. One should be cautious about taking at face value a group’s attribution of its own bad behavior to the alleged shortcomings of another group (management) or of policy.

Nevertheless, the study does raise questions about the influence of managerial action or policy on staff morale and productivity. While I disagree that bad behavior is caused – or averted – by specific workplace policies, productivity and morale can be.

Of the various factors related to managing people, the one this subject touches on is the managerial duty to remove impediments to performance. It is not necessarily a manager’s role to provide employees a balanced life, but it is an obligation to remove barriers – including those that are related to work-life balance issues – to peak employee performance.

If workplace stress or inflexible scheduling, for example, are dividing employees’ attention between their work, family, and other obligations (or, even, interests), then it only makes sense for managers to explore the possibilities for ameliorating or removing these obstacles. Some managers dismiss such employee concerns as “kid’s stuff,” “their problem to sort out,” or “too much trouble” to be bothered with, suggesting that their employees should just grow up and get with the program.

What such managers are really doing, however, is trying to reduce human resources to the uniformly pliable condition of their non-human resources. It is such managers who need to grow up into their duties and get with the program. Attempting to escape the grief their workers insist on giving them, they validate and multiply that grief.

But this grief isn’t in the form of bad behavior – that arises from individual character, not organizational policy. It is in the form of reduced productivity and higher turnover, the twin engines of poor performance, fueled by the discontent filling the vacuum left by managerial inattention. If it helps turn your attention to better performance of your own duties, then it is a good you should encourage, rather than try to ignore.

Maintain your focus on productivity. Just be sure you better understand what helps and what hurts your staff’s efforts to do the same. Then, in order to help them do their jobs, do yours.

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