别灰心！遇到糟糕的老板会令你成为更好的管理者

    大多数人可能都能举出几个例子，在一些前老板和公司领导人光辉榜样的鼓舞下，你终于变得更博学，更擅长沟通，或者更积极敬业。但你有没有想过，有一些领导者由于其树立的反面例子，也塑造了我们的行为和管理风格？

    奥斯丁数码公司T3首席执行官兼创始人盖伊•加迪斯认为：“我们向一起工作的所有人学习，不论这些人给我们带来的经历是好还是坏。有些可以作为负面教材。我们总会遇上讨厌的人，分享坏榜样对你的发展同样重要。”

    那么，加迪斯和其他高管从那些走错路的、固执己见的、或者恶魔般的老板身上，学到了什么？

    封闭性心理的代价

    加迪斯担任市场营销总监时，她所在公司的首席执行官专横傲慢，认为自己始终都是正确的，从来不听从其他人的意见。在经济低迷时期，对于如何改变公司的方向，从衰退中恢复过来，加迪斯产生了一个想法。她写了一份商业计划，怀着万分激动的心情，将计划书提交给自己的老板兼导师。

    她回忆道：“他说：‘我不支持你的计划，我不会参与其中。’这让我深受打击。”于是，她放弃了继续推行自己的创意。“我学到了一种非常重要的品质：你必须听取周围的人的意见。”

    如果不是CEO狠狠关上了她面前的那扇大门，加迪斯可能永远不会考虑自己创业。事实上，正是他拒绝倾听的做法，成为加迪斯满含热情开创新事业的动力。

    授权的重要性

    来自德克萨斯州圣马科斯的辛西娅•冈萨雷斯之前的一位老板，会根据情况，武断地制定和修改规定。员工永远不清楚，哪一条规则在什么时候适用，因此他们做每件事情，都取决于老板的个人意见。

    有一次，冈萨雷斯提前预定了一辆公司的车，要送一位学生前往另外一个地方，结果发现老板取消了预定，把车派给了其他人。她解释道：“她希望我能用自己的车。因为担心个人责任，我拒绝了这一要求。驾驶私家车出现事故，不属于保险范围，而且跟我在一起的是别人心爱的孩子。”

    最后的结果是，老板自己开车送走了那名学生。这是一种效率低下的做法，事实上，她做了冈萨雷斯的工作。在这一次经历之后，冈萨雷斯表示，她会授权下属自己做决定，并且要求他们遵守之前确立的指导方针和规定，而不是向她寻求答案。

    她说道：“我会确定一项任务，将它分配给其他人，提出一个最终期限，然后说：‘如果我能提供任何帮助，请告诉我。’我的管理理念是，我的工作就是让下属尽可能做到成功。我的工作是帮助他们取得成功。”

    恐惧心理导致问题被隐瞒

    来自西雅图的市场营销总监盖尔曾供职的一家公司，其创始人会公开批评团队成员。他会对首席设计师说：“我做你的工作肯定比你做得好，我只用幻灯片就能把事情做好。”

    这样的言论带有羞辱性，会让人丧失信心，而且会导致员工不敢提出问题。她说：“这在公司内形成了一种恐惧的氛围，而这绝对不是一种好的公司运营方式。公司真正的问题在还有可能解决的时候不会暴露出来，而是会继续恶化，直到变得严重。”

    如今，盖尔也成为一名管理者，她会鼓励团队向她提出任何担忧或错误。只要有团队成员提出错误，她都会特地表示感谢。她说道：“结果是，我的工作更出色。你的下属在你犯错之前帮你消灭它，要远远好于你发出一份带有拼写错误的重要营销备忘录，或者创建了一个带有错误的登陆页面。”

    诚实反馈的价值

    来自马里兰州贝塞斯达的咨询师考特尼•约翰斯顿，曾经的雇主是自己很长时间的导师，结果两人的关系突然之间便陷入困境。这位导师要求约翰斯顿在全职工作之外，为新泽西分公司招兵买马。她的导师一直不同意约翰斯顿推荐的候选人，尽管当时寻觅这些候选人费尽了周折。

    约翰斯顿回忆道：“我在六个月内，每周面试30到40个人，因为我一直在努力寻找符合公司经济条件的‘璞玉’。”但最终，她还是聘请了一支咨询团队，因为很难找到符合所有要求的全职员工。

    在完成一个重大项目之后，约翰斯顿回到办公室，结果发现老板已经取消了下一个项目的规划会议。她把约翰斯顿拽到一边。“她说：‘要么你自己辞职，要么我找理由炒你鱿鱼。’”

    约翰斯顿感觉自己遭到了双重打击，因为一方面，她事先没有收到任何警告，另一方面，那个女人一直是她亲密的导师。她说道：“我绝对不会对员工做这种事。我从来不会与下属建立这种友谊，却不给他们提供诚实的反馈。”(财富中文网)

    翻译：刘进龙/汪皓

    Many of us can point to former bosses and corporate heads who inspired us to become more well-read, better at communication, or more engaged because of their shining examples. But what about those leaders who shaped our behavior and management style because of the negative example they have set?

    “We learn from everyone we work with, whether they’re good or bad experiences. They can be examples of things not to do,” says Gay Gaddis, chief executive and founder of T3, an Austin-based digital agency. “All of us have had people who were obstacles, who were bad examples. Sharing that is just as important as going, ‘Rah, rah!’ “

    So, what have Gaddis and other executives learned from misguided, wrongheaded, or simply evil bosses?

    The cost of a closed mind

    When Gaddis was a marketing executive, her chief executive was overbearing, assumed he was always right, and failed to listen to others. During an economic downturn, Gaddis developed an idea on how to change the company’s direction to recover from the slump. She wrote a business plan and, full of excitement, presented it to her boss and mentor.

    “He said, ‘I don’t support your plan and I’m not going to be a part of it.’ I was so shot down by that,” she recalls, that she quit to pursue her idea. “I learned that is a very important quality: you’ve got to listen to the people around you.”

    Gaddis never would’ve thought to go out on her own if the door hadn’t been slammed so firmly in her face by the CEO. Indeed, his refusal to listen was part of her motivation to hit the ground running.

    The importance of delegation

    Cynthia Gonzales, an educator based in San Marcos, Texas, used to work for a boss who made up and changed rules arbitrarily, depending on the situation. Employees never knew which rules would apply at any given moment, and they had to depend on the boss’s say-so for everything.

    One time, Gonzales arrived to check out a pre-reserved company vehicle to take a student to an off-site venue, only to find that her boss had countermanded the reservation and given the car to someone else. “The expectation is that I would use my private vehicle. Concerned with personal liability, I refused,” she explains. “Our private vehicles, if we were in any kind of accident, were not covered under the insurance, and I have someone else’s precious child with me.”

    The leader ended up driving the student herself, a less efficient solution that effectively had her doing Gonzales’ job. Because of her experience, Gonzales says she empowers her staff to make their own decisions and expects them to follow pre-established guidelines and rules, rather than look to her for answers.

    “I define a task and assign it to someone, give them a deadline and say, ‘If I can be a resource to you, let me know,’ ” she says. “My philosophy on management is my job is to make the people who answer to me as successful as possible. My job is to facilitate their success.”

    How fear can bury problems

    Gail, a marketing executive based in Seattle, used to work for a company whose founder publicly criticized members of the team. He would say things like, “I can do your job better than you and I can do it with just PowerPoint” to the lead designer.

    Not only was the behavior humiliating and demoralizing, it discouraged the staff from bringing problems to his attention. “It creates a climate of fear, and a climate of fear is never a great way to run a business,” she says. “Real problems in your business will not be exposed when they’re still solvable and instead they’re going to fester and turn into big problems.”

    Now that she’s a manager, she encourages her team to bring any concerns or mistakes to her attention. Whenever they do point out a mistake, she goes out of her way to thank them. “As a result, my work is better,” she says. “If you’re going to make a mistake and your team catches it, that’s way better than if you send out an important marketing memo with a typo in it or create a landing page with a mistake.”

    The value of honest feedback

    Courtney Johnston, a consultant based in Bethesda, Md., went to work for a long-time mentor but almost immediately ran into trouble. The mentor asked Johnston, to staff up a New Jersey office in addition to shouldering her full-time responsibilities. Her mentor kept rejecting the candidates that Johnston brought to her, who were difficult to find in the first place.

    “I went through six months of interviewing 30 to 40 people a week because I’m trying to find the diamond in the rough I could afford,” recalls Johnston, who eventually had to hire a consulting team because it was impossible to find full-time candidates who met all the requirements.

    Johnston returned to the office after finishing a large project, only to find that her boss had cancelled a meeting to plan the next project. She pulled Johnston aside. “She said, ‘You either quit or I’ll find a reason to fire you.’ “

    Johnston felt doubly blindsided because she’d been given no warning and the woman had been her close mentor. “I will never do that to an employee,” she says. “I will never form that kind of friendship and not give them honest feedback.”