In my first role as a supervisor there were lots of parts of the job that I loved, but one part I hated. I figured if I was going to have to do this part of the role, I might as well find a way to do it really well.
In my first leadership role many years ago, I loved most parts of my job. I had a team of five great guys, most of them friends outside of work, and all of whom I’d worked with before. I found the role very challenging, and enjoyed mostly all of it.
But there was one part I definitely did not look forward to. From the day I started the role I was dreading having to deliver the annual performance reviews with each of the team. I had never delivered one before, and the ones I’d been on the receiving end of were mostly poorly carried out, uncomfortable, and no one got much benefit from.
I really did not want to do performance reviews with my new team.
But I knew I had to, and figured if I was going to do what I didn’t want to, I might as well try to do it well. So I read in detail the company procedures for the review process, and sat and had a good hard think about what I didn’t like from the last time and what I would do differently with my team.
I took the key parts of the company process, tailored them to suit my team and the way I prefer to communicate, added in a few extra points to cover, and then checked the whole process to make sure it would deliver the outputs and completed forms the HR department needed.
When it came time to do the reviews the with guys, I still didn’t find it very comfortable or natural, but we got a good result, had a productive discussion, and I think we all left feeling more positive about the team relationships than when we went in.
Leaders Have to do the Parts they Hate
.jpg.aspx?width=350&height=296)
As a leader, supervisor or manager you will find parts of your job that you hate to do. You should make the effort to find ways to do these things as well as you can.
There are things we hate to do in any job. When you are a team member though, with no one reporting to you, if you don’t do the part you hate then most probably not much will happen until someone makes you do it, or someone else in the team does it for you.
In leadership roles though, if you don’t do the tough parts of the job like feedback and discipline, nobody else can do them for you – you are your team’s only boss. And you might be the only one that knows these things need doing – a few unaddressed poor behaviours from a team member won’t get the attention of your boss, and no one else may ever know you did nothing about it.
The problem is that if you ignore the parts of the job that are difficult and you don’t like doing (like giving negative feedback) – the problems only get bigger over time. The longer the unacceptable behaviours go unaddressed, the harder they become to deal with, and the more likely they are to continue.
You have an obligation as part of your role as a people manager to do all the parts of your job – including holding people to account for their actions, and giving them feedback and discipline so that they can either become better at their jobs or leave the team all together.
Everyone has things about their job that they hate, the best thing you can do is find a way to become good at the parts you hate, and find easy to remember tools and models that help make these parts easier to handle.