Touchy-Feely Alert! This post contains writing about emotions.
I like to be prepared. I’m not good at winging it. That’s
why I’ve approached life with obsessive tendencies, and being prepared has
served me well.
But I’ve messed up. I’ve missed something, and now I feel
lost.
I am most certainly prepared in terms of all the tangible things a person needs to help
make a new business work. But despite all my MBA reading on organisational
behaviour and leadership, the years spent as a business consultant, and the
many projects I’ve worked on involving large teams, the one thing I didn’t consider
was this:
How it feels to be
the boss.
Just writing that sentence gives me a little bit of vertigo.
I knew it would be this way, but I didn’t expect it to feel this
way.
I think ‘isolated’ is as good a word as any to encapsulate
how it feels. Of course, I’ve heard the expression it’s lonely at the top, but I didn’t think it would apply to a tiny
business like mine. My business card jokingly gives my job title as “Chief
Executive Coffee Boy” but I’m hardly overseeing an empire.
I don’t have any solutions, but what I do have is the poor
judgement to write about why it feels very isolating to me, and perhaps this
will help others to be better prepared than I.
I have a weakness. I’m someone who likes and needs the approval of others; who
likes to be liked. For example, at school I was one of the jokers, because
getting the laughs gave me that sense of approval. I became Deputy Head Boy in
the Sixth Form, not because I was the most appropriate choice, or responsible
student, but because voting for me was plainly ridiculous, and so people did it
for fun. Not in a derisive, ‘laughing at’ sense, but in a ‘laughing with’ one. I
gained a sense of belonging from the enjoyment that seemed to give everyone
(except the teachers).
Now, however, as the boss I can’t be the self-deprecating joker.
I’d love to be (as it’s my natural role) and I’ve certainly tried, but it
doesn’t work. As the boss I need to be the leader, setting standards for my
team. I need to have the answers. I need to be consistent and credible. On the
occasions I have let the joker out of his box, I’ve found that key staff don’t
get the joke. For example, I’ve at times adopted a shrug and said “Oh, I’m
rubbish at that… why don’t you do it? You’re much better than I am” in the hope
that the person would understand that I’m trying to motivate them whilst
offering them a chance to own a particular task. However, some staff members
take me at my word and believe I really must be rubbish! In itself that is not
an issue, but it does contribute to a more serious problem, which is a lack of
trust in me as a boss. How can my team trust that I’m making the right
management decisions if they frequently see me as a bit crap?
So in time there’s this look that comes out on the face of
some staff members. It says “you’re rubbish and you know it, and I know my job better
than you”. And there is groupthink amongst team members, which turns the look
into “we all know better than you.
Just leave us to it and stop interfering”. One member of staff actually said that to me
once.
I’ve created a monster.
This is where it gets quite solitary. As the boss my view of
the business stretches much wider and also much further forward than anyone’s. I
have the full picture, and I’m the only one who does. So my management
decisions are taken with this full picture in mind. I have the Operational, Tactical
and Strategic views. But to everyone else my decisions may seem unusual, as
they are not presented with the benefit of full context. Staff members only
have the Operational view. So this leads to the monster questioning my
decisions, doubting my judgement, and I suspect feeling a bit frustrated with me.
So I’m disconnected from them.
Now don’t get me wrong. My team are wonderful. They will
never know just how much I love them… really… when I think of them I could
almost cry because I care about each of them so much. I see the younger ones
developing as lovely, confident people, and the older ones balancing the other things going on in
their lives alongside the massive learning curve of this business, and it makes
me feel very protective. I desperately try to help them, and be a friend, and a
good boss.
In the early stages of the business I thought I could bridge
the gap. I thought I could be one of the team, and we could all be buddies. I’m
a good guy, so why not? But I’m currently wrestling with the realisation that I
may always be just ‘the boss’ in their eyes, and there might always be a barrier between us.
And I wonder whether that realisation is a rite of passage
that most bosses have to go through. I can’t help thinking of all the work Christmas
parties I’ve been to in my life, where everyone (including me) wanted to sit
with their friends and nobody wanted the seat next to the boss for the next two
hours. And at a work dinner party we recently
had, it felt like I was that boss.
So perhaps this is all quite normal. And there are certainly
advantages to being detached. If I have to discipline someone for taking an hour’s worth of
smoking breaks during a six hour shift, that is a lot easier if there is a professional
distance between us. It is horrible to have to say no to a holiday request if
it would leave us short-staffed, but it is even harder to do so if the staff
member is a close friend. Basically, all the tough decisions that I MUST make
as the boss are perhaps made slightly easier if I am isolated from everyone.
I don’t think anyone can be a good boss if fear of being unpopular
prevents them taking a necessary decision.
But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy how it feels right now.
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How about you?
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How about you?
