Punishment
The relationship between performance and punishments is fragile. Too little punishment can often leave workers lax and inefficient, but too much punishment can make a worker apathetic. I personally believe that moderation in punishment is key, but most of the people I’ve met in positions of power wield their authority with an iron fist. When I think of excessive punishment, one individual always pops into my mind. It’s interesting because my initial impression of this individual was actually quite positive. It was only after interacting with him consistently in a professional setting that I grew to dislike his behavior.
I met this individual K when he first decided to interview me with regards to an open position he had available in his team in a smaller startup. Upon first meeting him, I was impressed by both his scholastic achievements but also his overall demeanor. He talked a lot about how an internship under him was really about enriching myself and how he thought that I would be able thrive under his mentorship. I was very excited for what I perceived as my first real job where I would learn skills applicable to my future goals. I was determined to make the most of my summer working under K, and I was excited about this opportunity in a way that I had never really been for anything.
Initially, I saw K as a light-hearted individual who could be stern if his employees needed some discipline. Every week there were two group meetings conducted, with one involving other groups and one being composed of solely our team. When reviewing the team’s overall progress, K would often make comments on the direction of a project or level of output that everyone had produced by that meeting. In the beginning these comments were mostly neutral, however I noticed that over time, (perhaps growing more comfortable interacting with us interns) K was surprisingly aggressive when none of his peers were around. He could quite easily get riled up if someone’s performance wasn’t up to par, which clearly made everyone in the meeting room extremely uncomfortable. K would often aggressively attack certain members of our team if they were performance was not satisfactory, and he went as far as he possibly could when engaging with people who did not fulfill his expectations. Most unforgettable to me was when he criticized a certain individual (who was concurrently working on another significant project for his graduate degree) as lazy and ineffective and noted that if said person was a full-time employee, he would be fired on spot. While it clearly bothered everyone that K was openly verbally abusive to certain people, no one really did or said anything. K’s public humiliation was clearly taking a toll on this individual; his progress slowed down to a grinding halt and he actually quit a few weeks after.
If I was K, I don’t think that I would have handled the situation the way he did at all. Perhaps the individual’s performance was subpar to the point that he did nothing of value. It’s very possible that K used this individual as an example to instill a sense of caution into all of us with regards to how our team would operate. However, I don’t think publicly humiliating anyone has ever been effective at motivating them. All K really accomplished was fostering an environment where people either cared too much or didn’t care at all because they felt exploited by K. If K had perhaps told the struggling individual in private that he had one chance to perform to expectations, perhaps it would have motivated the individual to try and perform to expectations knowing his job was on the line.
Let us try to distinguish an employee who "had a bad hair day" from another employee who was been performing at a substandard level for some time. Since your experience is as an intern, the time on the job may have been insufficient for you to separate one from the other. But if you were able to do that, then you might see that they call for quite different responses from the manager.
ReplyDeleteThat said, managers may experience stress and frustration from sources that are unrelated to the productivity of the workgroup and/or their bosses may not be expert at managing them in a way that they find encouraging. So it is hard to tell what is the personality of the manager and what should be attributed to other factors, unless you know the whole situation for the manager.
Many of your classmates said they were strongly against singling out a particular employee in a group meeting. Better to have that sort of thing done in private, if at all. In most cases, I'd agree with that, but there are exceptions to most rules. And sometimes you have to consider the deterrence effect on other employees. But the prompt was really focusing on seeing if the underperforming employee could improve productivity and then how to do that. It's a challenge, no doubt. And it definitely requires patience in the manager. It sounded like K didn't have that.
From my experiences with those in a professional job with subordinates, they often talk about how aggressive their bosses are, and how this almost forces them to adopt similar tendencies with their own employees. This trickle-down effect is an overall negative, I feel. It doesn't usually reflect how people really feel or want to act, but is rather motivated by upper-level frustrations.
DeleteI think calling out an individual in a group meeting is just a terrible way to get the message across properly. It paints the manager as irrationally emotional rather than able and stable. It also often lowers overall respect for the manager amongst any employee who witnesses the event. I do see the deterrence effect, but wonder if fear is the only way to deter employees from slacking or under-performing. K definitely did not have patience, but employers and even teachers that have this trait are far and few between.