Tales from the Corporate Frontline

My Best Manager/Supervisor

This article relates to the My Manager/Supervisor competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. It reflects an employee’s feelings regarding their direct manager or supervisor. The manager/supervisor competency covers topics like clarity of goals, manager support, coaching and feedback, and regular reviews of performance. The old adage that “people leave their managers, not organizations” is often true. Of all the workplace stressors, a bad immediate manager is one of the worst and will directly impact the emotional health, productivity, and retention of an employee. Evaluating this competency can be especially useful if your organization is losing quality employees while your compensation and benefit packages are equivalent with industry standards.

This short story, The Best Manager/Supervisor, is part of AlphaMeasure’s compilation, Tales From the Corporate Frontlines. It illustrates how the qualities of an excellent manager are manifested in the workplace and how these qualities can affect the attitude and level of engagement of employees.

Anonymous Submission

I’d like to tell you about the absolute best manager I’ve encountered in a very long work history. I’ll call her Marie. She was a tiny woman with a huge heart, plenty of courage, and an incredible sense of humor.

Marie loved people, and people loved her. She began her career at the company, and worked her way into this managerial spot over a period of nearly 20 years. It was her dream job.

Marie was smart. Entrusted with the relocation and setup of a small acquisition sales and service business, she knew that hiring the right people to help her do the job was the most important decision she would make. I was one of those people, along with three others. Months later, as the business began to come together, it was obvious that she had made perfect choices.

Our small team basically proceeded to set this enterprise up, from unpacking boxes to deciding how to answer the phone. We had plenty of help with computer and office machine setup – otherwise we were on our own.

The next six months were hectic. There were plenty of overtime hours, difficult customers, periods of computer downtime, and empty bottles of Tylenol in the trash.

But Marie handled it all very admirably. She did it with grace, fairness, and an incredible sense of humor. She knew just when to break the tension with a joke – and we’d regain our perspective and our energy. She gave guidance when asked, and would move heaven and earth to get us the things we needed to get the job done. She trusted and respected us, and we, her. Under her watchful eye, we basically created our jobs, and the procedures and policies that served the business best.

But, after ten years, I remember the little things as well. The surprise pizza delivery while we worked overtime for the third consecutive weekend, ice cream breaks on a hot summer afternoon, her deadpan remark in that perfectly diffused a potentially volatile customer service problem.

Together, we achieved a successful transition, kept our customers and serviced many new ones, kept our outside sales force happy, and had some fun along the way. Marie was a very special person, and the very best of managers.

Measure. Report. Improve your organization with AlphaMeasure employee surveys.

Josh Greenberg is President of AlphaMeasure, Inc.

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