Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Do people associate your appearance with bad tidings? There is another way.

Let’s oversimplify and divide the world of bosses into two categories:

1. those bosses who only visit when something is wrong

and

2. those bosses who visit everyday to chat about the weather

I have worked for both and prefer the second type. It should be no surprise that I behave like the second type. When I supervise people, I visit them everyday to learn what is happening in their world.

These behavior patterns manifest themselves in several ways and extend beyond the boss-not boss relationship. For example, there is the service provider and service consumer relationship. When I am a service consumer, I visit the service providers often to chat about the weather. When I stick my head in their door, they don’t know that I “want something from them.” I may be there to learn how their kids did at soccer over the weekend.

Regardless of the relationship type, I know that with the first type of person, when they stick their head in the door I won’t like it. I come to associate their face with bad things.

Yuck, who wants to be the face of bad things?