Leadership Podcast Episode 2 - Lead, don't manage

two personal work stories to illustrate why managers aren't leaders

HMA and Athem micro managers

plus personal account of how I handle training, without micromanaging

longer episode - over 13 minutes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Making Ripples. I'm Bob Ging, your host. Leaders are not managers. You can manage time, you can manage money, you can manage facilities, even timelines and expectations. But you don't manage people. You lead them. And there are differences that stand out when you find bad managers. I've had 30 years in medical insurance, and most of the time I've had good ones. But I've had a couple who stand out for being non-leaders. One company that I worked for had eight managers over a period of eight years. Most of them were a thousand miles, three thousand miles actually, away. And we communicated by phone, by text message, by email. I made a practice of limiting outside interactions while I was in production mode so that I could focus on doing my work. I had one manager who encouraged me to set those boundaries. We were in cubes in the office, and she said, You need to put a sign on, Bob, because you're getting interrupted too many times. Too much of saying, Yes, I'll get right on that, and getting out of the flow. So I put up a sign that said, if you get an issue of updating to me in the morning, I'll get it done in the afternoon. If you get it to me in the afternoon, I'll get it done the next morning. I could schedule those one-offs. When I worked in another company when the boss was 3,000 miles away, I tried to do some of the same things. I realized that our text messaging service, instant messenger, I was getting a lot of interruptions for. Shortly after I did that, my manager at the time called me and said, You can't do that. I can't get a hold of you. Inwardly, I'm thinking, yeah, boss, that's why I put it up there. Because if there were errors, she wouldn't just simply tell me or email me the cases that I needed to fix. She would call up and say, Can we talk over these? There might be 10 items, and we're taking half-hour, 45 minutes to go through each one of them. When if she just said it to me, I would look and go, okay, I'll take care of it in a moment. Get it through, take less time. But she wanted to talk these through. So I had to take the DD off. Fortunately, she was not my manager for a long time. So I didn't have to put up with that. But that was an example of a bad manager, a micromanager, not giving me the project and saying, go with it, check with me at the end, but let's walk through. Like a parent walks a child through. It was insulting. And it kept my work down. Another case was even worse. So previous situation, we had worked as a team in this location. It was prior to COVID. So we were working in the office and then we started working from home. We were fine. We did our work. We got it done. We even took claims home when we were in paper mode to do and bring back. We worked just fine. We worked through irregularities. We went over the process and improved it, sharing with each other. Then we got a new manager. She was the director and in very definite terms, directing. She had her ideas of how we should do things, and her way, it was her way or the highway. Our numbers lagged, and we needed to catch up. But rather than getting the team together and discussing it and brainstorming about how best to improve the process with the people who were actually doing the work, somebody two levels up in leadership decided: no, we're going to take one person as the lead who knew this new system that we had gotten in. She would test out the process and establish the baseline for the rate of work that we would do. And then we had to meet that. This was delivered to us. All the team members said, no, that's unrealistic. That's too fast on it. We're gonna have errors. If you speed up, you're more likely to have those errors creep in. But the response was nope, this is the way, deal with it. Oh, and if you don't make your standards, these new standards, you might get let go. Now we were all working from home, and the first step, we were pulled into the office for a month of mandatory overtime. Nobody likes mandatory overtime. Occasionally it is required, but it's usually not that long. We were pulled in to do three hours, not just three hours a week, three hours per day of overtime, and then 10 hours on Saturday. Now, the extra pay for that wasn't bad, it was kind of nice. 25 hours a week extra time at time and a half, 100 hours of time and a half for the month, whole month of June. The paycheck was nice, the stress was not, especially for number one, establishing the rate, not by the whole team, but by one person. Number two, we were to work in the office, and only would have the privilege, which was expected practice, but the privilege of working from home if we met the standards. And there was the threat of if we didn't make the standard, we might be let go. Penalties up until up and including up to and including termination. Not leading with the carrot, but with the stick. And we were prohibited, not just, they didn't just say we really don't want to be brainstorming and working together. We want to pass those improvements if you find the possible improvements through the lead and through the manager, with the added thinking that well, we we know you're capable. Every time the review came and we hadn't made the standards, oh well, this isn't negative. We just believe in you. We we believe you'll make this standard, at the same time holding the threat overhead. And we were specifically told: do not consult with your co-workers to devise improvements. They must be, again, parental, hand holding a child, approved by the lead and the supervisor. This by somebody who never in her life had worked on this system that we were doing. She had no experience with the workflow, but she was giving orders. She was a manager. Worse than that, she was a director, thou shalt be done. At the end, after beating my head against the wall, I ended up not being able to make the standard. Of course, I knew that. I worked through state-mandated breaks in the morning and afternoon. It's mandated by state law, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 in the afternoon. But if I were to make my numbers, I would, I skipped them. I ate lunch at my desk. And after that, I had the HR depart, HR director, come to my office, to my cubicle, and invite me to go to her office. Not a good sign. They said, we understand that you're doing your best effort, but you're making up the standards. So after 13 years at the same company, I was let go. Now that I did get unemployment, that was a good thing, but it drove me crazy. And you know, the first reaction I had when I left the office was relief. I didn't have to go in to work the next morning. I didn't have to keep beating my head on a wall. I didn't have to respond to a manager from hell, not a leader. Let me share with you what my training process was and the difference that it made. I would train people, even managers, on new systems constantly. I would set them down and say, walk them through the process. Here's how I do it. Here's why I do this. Here's the necessary information and the necessary result for processing claims. And then I would say, if you have a better way to get to the end with giving all this information in and getting the right results, go for it. My way is not the highway, my way is not the only way. And everybody but one got that and personalized their approach. That's what a leader is supposed to be: inspiring confidence, helping people with the process, and giving them the freedom to do it their way. That's what a leader is. A leader is not a manager. And why do I do that? Because my approach was, boss, show me what I need to do. Give me the tools to do my job. Be aware and around for if I have questions, and then go ahead, go away, and let me do my job that you've trained me for. That is leadership. Next time, let's talk about what a leader is and some principles. I have three key leadership principles that I'd like to share with you. Thanks for listening. I invite your feedback.