Bad Boss Part 6 | Don’t Be That Person

Back again with another bad boss story. In this video, Matt reads about a story of a manager who would publicly haze employees. While it is important to keep employees accountable there are better ways to manage employees. Matt talks through that here as well.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you! 

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

This is a story about a boss who hazed the employee. So I once had a boss who, in a weekly meeting – weekly team meeting, would treat one person like a hero and another person like a total loser who wasn’t doing anything right. We’re talking full-on hazing in a group setting. You never knew who was going to be the victim, so we all dreaded the meeting. Once you realize you weren’t gonna be the picked on that week, you could breathe a sigh of relief, but then you felt horrible for the person who was the victim (and you felt really guilty if you were the praised hero that week). Not surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of substance behind why an individual is being praised or hazed so much; it was just a management technique.

So I don’t think ever hazing people is a management technique you wanna copy. If somebody does a good job then you absolutely should recognize them and call them out for their good job. Preferably in a public setting, so everyone knows, hey this is what a good job looks like and this is the person who most recently did it and let’s all give him a pat on the back because they’re all helping us all by doing their job really well. On the other hand, if you have somebody who’s not doing something well 1) you don’t wanna publicly discuss the issue with them but 2) there’s no point in pointing out how they screwed up or making them feel bad or making fun of them or treating them badly. What you wanna do is talk about here’s what went wrong, here’s why I think it went wrong, here’s what it should have looked like, and then let’s figure out how we can get that to happen next time. There’s no – you can’t undo history. You can’t go back in time and fix stuff. So what you really wanna focus on is how to not have those things happen again. And maybe they need more training, maybe they didn’t get clear directions, maybe it was something totally out of their control or some combination. Whatever it was, figure out how to solve it so it doesn’t keep happening, and it works better next time, and they’re clear on what they should do or could do or where to go for extra help resources or whatever the case. But making somebody feel like a jerk or a failure or a victim, it just is completely counterproductive. And not only are you not helping that person making them feel bad and demotivating them, but you’re also putting everyone else in a position of worrying that now they’re gonna be treated like that. And pretty soon what happens is the good people go look for somewhere else to work where they’re treated better and their contributions are valued. And what you’re gonna be left with is a team of people with too low self-esteem to go anywhere else and were willing to put up with your crap. And you’re gonna have a very underperforming, demotivated team of people who hate your guts but won’t say it to your face. So if that’s the kind of culture you’re looking, for by all means haze people publicly. But if that’s not what you’re going for then make sure you’re not that boss.