Discipline
This week's prompt is rather interesting. The issue at hand has been on my mind for quite some time. Having an incident occurred due to someone's fault or misfeasance, what is the right way to proceed? How to talk to an employee about their suboptimal performance? How to give and receive critical feedback?
Let's first acknowledge the importance of the topic. It might seem that it's limited to performance issues arising in the workplace, but after some consideration it becomes clear that similar mechanisms take place in private affairs—relationships, both romantic and platonic, crumble both when feedback is neglected completely and when hard criticism results in heated arguments past the point of no return.
From my experience, disciplinary issues may also arise when a higher ranked employee is underperforming. In vertically structured organizations, there are sometimes no tools to send feedback upward. A slacking manager may result in a whole team suffocating and losing in performance. What's even worse is that it is then hard for an outsider to figure out what the root cause of the communal haywire is; wrong people may face repercussions. When this happened to a team I was working with, we had no choice but to wait past the point of no return and only when it was clear there was no chance of all of us continuing to work together could we give the much-needed feedback.
On a different occasion, I worked with a manager who wasn't competent enough to evaluate an employee. It had to be later pointed out that the employee was getting paid for doing work of very low quality and that the standards in the industry are different, to say the least. This happens often in tech startups with non-technical founders: failing to find a technical co-founder who has both skin in the game for the well-being of the company and the understanding of engineering, a non-technical founder might end up employing unmotivated engineers whose work he or she can't even evaluate. Luckily, the founder in my particular story later went to great lengths to learn more elaborate technical tools and is now doing fine.
I'm trying to think of a story where an employee lost all motivation to work after a disciplinary talk but can't recall one. I recently came to a realization that people, especially those with high-skilled jobs, are motivated to work. The best managers I've met give as much freedom and trust to their subordinates as possible. In general, granting one responsibility to do a task is a validation of one's capability; underperformance shrinks the responsibilities you're given, and that means your skills are not validated. People in general don't want to lose validation.
To speak the truth, I don't have enough data points to draw conclusions on what is and isn't effective just yet. I think employees perform best when they feel personally accountable for what they're doing. People want to receive credit for the accomplishments and in general I don't think people are afraid of facing repercussions for their flops. The shorter the feedback cycle is, the less risk there is for both the super- and subordinate.
Let's first acknowledge the importance of the topic. It might seem that it's limited to performance issues arising in the workplace, but after some consideration it becomes clear that similar mechanisms take place in private affairs—relationships, both romantic and platonic, crumble both when feedback is neglected completely and when hard criticism results in heated arguments past the point of no return.
From my experience, disciplinary issues may also arise when a higher ranked employee is underperforming. In vertically structured organizations, there are sometimes no tools to send feedback upward. A slacking manager may result in a whole team suffocating and losing in performance. What's even worse is that it is then hard for an outsider to figure out what the root cause of the communal haywire is; wrong people may face repercussions. When this happened to a team I was working with, we had no choice but to wait past the point of no return and only when it was clear there was no chance of all of us continuing to work together could we give the much-needed feedback.
On a different occasion, I worked with a manager who wasn't competent enough to evaluate an employee. It had to be later pointed out that the employee was getting paid for doing work of very low quality and that the standards in the industry are different, to say the least. This happens often in tech startups with non-technical founders: failing to find a technical co-founder who has both skin in the game for the well-being of the company and the understanding of engineering, a non-technical founder might end up employing unmotivated engineers whose work he or she can't even evaluate. Luckily, the founder in my particular story later went to great lengths to learn more elaborate technical tools and is now doing fine.
I'm trying to think of a story where an employee lost all motivation to work after a disciplinary talk but can't recall one. I recently came to a realization that people, especially those with high-skilled jobs, are motivated to work. The best managers I've met give as much freedom and trust to their subordinates as possible. In general, granting one responsibility to do a task is a validation of one's capability; underperformance shrinks the responsibilities you're given, and that means your skills are not validated. People in general don't want to lose validation.
To speak the truth, I don't have enough data points to draw conclusions on what is and isn't effective just yet. I think employees perform best when they feel personally accountable for what they're doing. People want to receive credit for the accomplishments and in general I don't think people are afraid of facing repercussions for their flops. The shorter the feedback cycle is, the less risk there is for both the super- and subordinate.
So, you may have an incompetent instructor, as evidenced by a variety of errors, suck as the Excel linking to an outdated form, which have happened recently. It seems students are sufficiently comfortable in class to comment about these things either by email or on the class site. I wonder, however, if they felt greater displeasure because of the inconvenience created, how they would punish me. Is not coming to class such a punishment? It could be, but until your post wouldn't have put it in that category.
ReplyDeleteThe personalities of the individuals and the culture/ethos of the place of work matter for how these things get worked through. I think you're right that professionals generally don't shirk, but if you are doing knowledge work you can't always be on, so need a break on occasion. That can possibly create an issue. I believe the bigger issue is that there is more the one way to skin a cat, but each person has a preferred way and the manager and employee might disagree about that. There can be stylistic/authoring disagreements which are quite intense. Sometimes the heat from that actually produces better work. But the people might get angry in the process. Is that punishment? I leave you to think through that question. We will discuss it some in class.
I do want to note that if there are large age differences or people have quite different backgrounds, what one might find perfectly okay the other finds unacceptable. I've said in class that economics as a profession has been taken to task for the evident misogyny. In a work environment that is generally hostile, can management be held to account?
Mistakes like that happen to all of us! It's unlikely any students think in terms of punishment; we're all here to learn and I think all our actions are primarily motivated by that.
DeleteTo add to your point: maybe it's manager's responsibility to foresee when an employee might temporarily lose the grip and lighten the work load (again, temporarily) accordingly. No one's output is constant. As for the heat that leads to better output—I wouldn't call it punishment unless it's intended, which is unlikely.
Yes, management can and should be hold accountable for hostility in a work environment, especially if it's targeting only certain groups of people. It is the management's job to accommodate for a variety of people and to make all of them comfortable in the workplace.