Our recent class discussion has been about the personal attributes of a
good manager. One that has been of varied opinions is that of
friendliness. I've had two bosses that have been 'friends' and in both
cases the boss could not seperate the 'buddy' from the boss. I guess that
in my mind our discussions and my experience tell me a couple of things:
1. Being friendly and being friends are two different things. It is hard
for some people to be stern on the job with people they consider a friend.
2. Friendliness is a probable need to be a good manager, but you don't
want to become a good friend to your subordinates. Kind of like not
dating your employees..... you can't put them on your level.
3. Instead calling this attribute 'friendly' maybe we should go for
another term, civility for instance. While civility has a cold ring to
it, maybe the position of manager should be this way in order to create
the needed seperation for an effective working environment.
As Wendy Brandon, one of our classmates, said, "The friendly quality may
not be mandatory for managing others, but true leaders would possess this
attitude because they want to know and be approached by others."
If you are percieived as 'unfriendly', why would anyone come to you with a
work related problem, especially if you are deemed unapproachable.
What does everybody out there think?????
[Host's Note: Welcome David! I'll take a stab at your question... People
do go to "unapproachable" and unfriendly people because they have to do
so. When you have an item for your boss, or for the person responsible
for a given area, you often have little choice. Maybe it's the same in
the rest of our lives; there are peole we *have* to interact with whether
we like it or not. ...Rick]
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>