This article is a “must read” for all those in a management position of any level. Very insightful, a quite humorous – especially the pizza parlor story! Much thanks to you Tom Cassidy and the Monotones, wink* wink*, for this wonderful article. I was sitting here thinking to myself, wow that’s true, hmm..he’s right about that, and so forth all through this article. Things that you think would come easily to you when you’re in a leadership role are often not what comes; life gets busy and emotions will change that but the really good bosses are indeed those that, in spite of their surroundings, can control themselves and their focus and teach it to others. Thanks Tom!

This Week’s Topic: Best Boss Ever

So what makes a good boss? Undeserving generous raises? A “you fill out your year end evaluation” attitude? Maybe it is something as simple as not being hard on you when you don’t give your best effort.

Nope. None of the above.  Not if you want to develop and grow as a person and as a manager. The “best boss” label is earned with a completely different set of criteria in my book, starting with, but not limited to some of the following:

I could list many more traits, but you get the picture. This person has to be sincere and unselfish as well as able to handle crisis with strength, courage, and calmness. Sounds like a person made up in a fairy tale? Well, I am fortunate to say that such bosses are out there because I had the privilege to work for such a person: David, or “El Cid”, as I liked to call him.

 As you can imagine with such a designation, there is not enough memory in my computer or words in my mind to fully give this story justice. However, I would be remiss in not trying at all.  

·       leadership
·       communication
·       team first approach
·       respect and support of the individual members of the team
·       creating a positive, productive and stable work environment
·       engaged but empowerment of the people
·       identifying strengths and weaknesses and how to adapt to situations         for better results
·       eager to learn as much as to teach
·       continual performance feedback

I reported to David for 3 years as part of a strategic account team, and it was one of the best times of my life. That is saying a lot considering the stress of the environment when working in such an area of the company. We used to refer to each day as “Ground Hog Day” after the movie, because each day felt like a time warp with the same issues to face from the previous day. We always referred our overall time in this division in dog years, so I guess you could say that we worked together for 21 years!

 I will focus on two examples of how David managed to rise above the bar to achieve best boss.

The first instance involved a breach of understanding between David and me.  The managers were required to give employee evaluations every 6 months. David always treated these exercises with the utmost importance because it created an opportunity for a formal sit down discussion about performance. He spent hours upon hours writing each review. Who knows how much more time was spent on the process in his mind.

David was always good with giving feedback about performance on a regular basis. This is critical. If a manager waits until the official review, then the individual and the team will suffer. The person will not develop as quickly because the areas in need of attention go unidentified and are not communicated in a timely manner. This can create a morale problem if the other members of the team perceive the individual is being allowed to perform below expectations without any attempt to correct the behavior. The team can also suffer if other team members witness that a problem is allowed to exist and decide that effort is not a top priority, causing them fall prey to achieving less by not trying to correct their own weaknesses. 

David and I sat down for one of my reviews. As one would expect, David was always candid and exerted maximum effort to accurately communicate his thoughts. The term “white wash” is sometimes used when the review is nothing but positive plusses through the entire list of topics. Managers will sometimes give such an evaluation if they do not believe in the importance of the review process, do not want to put in the work, or perhaps do not want to have some of the difficult conversations that can come with employee reviews.

My reviews had always tended to be very positive, and this one was no different. It was just as important to David to point out areas in need of improvement as it was to point out strengths. This is as it should be, for how else will one improve? 

At some point during the review David brought up a concern that I sometimes could be disruptive during the group meetings. I was dumbfounded. While a good manager always tries to communicate issues immediately and with examples, events and timing do not always allow this to happen in real life. This was one of those times. He went on to say that my injection of humor at times during meetings was the primary culprit. I simply could not understand or comprehend the concern, as David was also a person who liked to use humor, and we shared many moments of laughter throughout our time together. The difficulty of the issue was compounded because the examples provided by David were more general and he lacked specifics at the moment to help me understand. We finished the rest of the review and David agreed to give more thought to the matter he had raised.

With most managers, that would have been the end of it. Some managers might either forget about the situation due to the hyper speed in which the business world can work at times, or they may just choose to drop the subject with the guise that there were more important things to do. David was not like most managers. 

About a month or so later, we had a team meeting. The meeting seemed to transpire as normal, and once we finished, everyone went back to their work areas. David came over to me and asked to see me in his office. When I entered and he asked me to close the door, I still had no idea of what he wanted to discuss.

With the team meeting fresh in both of our minds, David proceeded to describe to me how my behavior had been disruptive with the points he wanted to emphasize. I could not understand at first how my humor in the meeting could be considered negative. I was merely making light of a situation and had no intention to be unruly. 

We argued about the matter for probably 10-15 minutes, something that the ego of most managers would never allow. I felt I was being attacked for no reason, and David felt just as strongly that such behavior had to stop. David was not about ego, but was about being a teacher and a leader. I refuted being disruptive because in my mind that is the last thing I would want to do (a true statement). David continued to site how my behavior had reduced the importance of the topic he was trying to discuss in a very strong manner.

At some point, the light bulb turned on for me. While my intent was to not be disruptive, and if anything, to provide some level of comfort to the meeting, the actual result produced the opposite affect that my manager was wishing to create. I was taking away focus from the moment.

I learned a very valuable lesson which sticks with me to this day. I enjoy humor, but David’s guidance brought about awareness to curtail such actions at inappropriate times.  It has also taught me to be more sensitive to group dynamics and the proper atmosphere that is sometimes needed for successful meetings.

It was through a combination of David’s sincere desire to help me develop along with his outstanding ability to communicate that I finally achieved an understanding of the issue and could then take measures to correct the problem.

The second illustration of what made David such a great boss was his ability to put team first and his own ego second. Most managers have a difficult time outside of the office of assimilating and socializing with the group. Most managers feel like they need to be the leader outside of the office as well, even though the circumstances may not make them the likely candidate.

David and I became good friends because we shared many of the same interests and passions.  We both loved music, and despite our complete and utter inability to sing, it never stopped us from doing so anyway!  David always called me “Tom Cassidy and the Monotones”. We also loved to read and would talk about favorite books. I would sometimes tell him he looked like the author, Stephen King. Yes, there was definitely a resemblance, and yes, he was not fond of it. 

We also liked to give nicknames to others which evolved around personality traits. I recall the nickname of “cadre cachet” we gave to one of the product managers because he was always using big words when speaking with individuals or even in a group presentation. He used those two words frequently enough to earn the nickname. He also confused some of the people at times, leaving some doubt as to what he really meant with some of his statements. Heck, I just looked them up on the computer and have no idea how he worked them into the conversations.

David and I both loved sports in general and baseball specifically. David was a life long Braves fan, and this gave me much ammo for heckling.  The Braves would always win the National League title and fall short in the World Series. David’s funk from their ineptitude could always be deepened by a well placed comment on my part, and to miss such an opportunity would not have done our friendship justice.

I recall one of the biggest laughs we shared. It was at a pizza place in Arizona at a sales meeting. There were about twenty of us from the company in a booth shaped like a horseshoe, except the booth it was more rectangular than round and with very narrow opening in the middle. Inside of the booth there were two tables with the gap coinciding with the booth opening. We were the only ones in the pizza place. It had been a long day of sales meetings and we were all hungry and tired, so much pizza and beer were ordered. 

A part of the conversation moved to music, and of course David and I were right in the middle of that one. As always, David and I tried to compete in our own little music trivia contest, and we were usually a pretty even match.  There were others who also began to get more excited about the conversation. The beers continued to flow and the trivia match turned from groups to favorite songs to lyrics, as was the usual progression.

What happened next was classic and spontaneous. We started to sing the lyrics (remember, Tom Cassidy and the Monotones were there), and then everyone the group started to sing the lyrics to songs. After one song would end, someone else would bring start to sing a new song and everyone else would join in tandem. If you did not know the lyrics, it was so loud that nobody noticed anyway! But we could not stop here. No. We somehow decided to stand up on the seat cushions in the booth to continue our serenading, all twenty or so of us. The pizza place didn’t mind, as we were still ordering more pizza and washing it down with the even more beer. Plus, we were probably pretty entertaining at this point when given the choice of an empty pizza joint or twenty people standing on their seats singing songs.

Near the end of this halleluiah chorus one of our carolers, Frank, falls onto the table, lands on a couple of open pizza boxes still housing a few slices, and looks up at Sue who was standing next to him and accuses her of pushing him. It couldn’t have had anything to do with the beer. We decided that was probably the signal to call it a night, but it gave us something to laugh about for many moons to come.

When we were at work, David was the boss.  He respected his people, and everyone respected him. When we were away from work, David had no pretension about him. He was just David.

It has been over 10 years since we worked together. Some of my fondest memories have David with a key role. We still speak on occasion, never as much as we would like, as time has a way of moving much more quickly than we realize.

I hope all of you have the opportunity to have a boss like David. You will be better for it, as will everyone else that might some day come under your leadership.  

In the end, the best boss is a role model who passes on the secrets of how to achieve success while also making sure everyone remembers to keep it all in perspective and enjoy the ride.

Thanks for the lessons and the memories, El Cid.