I've seen it happen so many times. A worker is promoted to manager and as soon as that happens their mind seem to switch an all empathy for fellow coworkers is gone. All of a sudden they are willing to defend all sorts of weird stuff happening, other managers, budget cuttings, bad laws and policies etc. The same seem to happen when people become rich, but for the sake of keeping it simple let's just talk about the worker – manager dynamic for now.
What I don't grasp is what comes first: Is anybody who becomes manager “forced” to turn off their emotions to be able to do their job? Or is it people who already have those traits who grabs the spots as managers?
Ok – story time! I think this story is a great example of what I mean:
I work at a unit with ~20 other people. Every one has their own particular skills and works either alone or in small sub units (2-3 people). A guy named Steve had his own work station, let's call it “X”. X was kind of a busy work station and when I started at the unit I remember Steve being the person who took the least amount of breaks. He always had something to do.
Shortly after I started working there – Steve was being promoted to become the groups manager. Since Steve had always been so busy, I never got to know him personally before he became the manager. But the first thing that happened was that Steves friend Jonah started to complain about Steve completely changing personality the day he became manager. “He used to be a bit bossy, but he became so cold and the detached the day he became boss, it literally switched from one day to the other”. I guess that's kind of normal since it's a changed dynamic when a friend is becoming the manager.
BUT what's more interesting is what happened to Steves work station, X. Since Steve is leaving X behind, he had to find someone to take that position. He chose to teach Trevor to do X. Trevor is now the one with a lot to do, but everything seem to work out for a while since Trevor accepts the work load.
After a while things are changing and X is going from being a lot to do – to A LOT to do. Things are starting to become crazy with X. And there is no way of stopping it or cutting down on X, it just needs to get done. Trevor starts to complain a little, but nothing happens. More time passes and X just becomes more and more and more. It's starts to become critical and Trevor now get's help from Eric. But it doesn't help cause there is still just too much to handle. So they continue to complain, this time a bit louder. Like – this can't go on this way, we need to fix a,b and c so that we can continue with X without going under!
And Steve is now furious! He turns on both Trevor and Eric and starts accusing them of not wanting to work, yelling at them for talking about X with the rest of us in the unit, says that “I had no problem with X when I was doing X”. Trevor tries to reason with Steve: “But you had a lot too when you were doing X, don't you remember? And here is the proof that X's work load has increased!”. But no, Steve just refuses to accept there is a problem with X.
Steve also thinks that the rest of us complains too much and refuses to see that the work is stressful. A lot is going on and I, myself, start to dislike Steve because of his lack of empathy. I do know Steve has a lot on his plate (goals, laws, economic restrictions from above etc) but still I can't get over his rude attitude towards us workers. There is just no empathy there. End result: Trevor quit, Eric is looking for a new job, Steve says “oh, everyone just quits this workplace, what can I do? Everyone need to work harder and become more efficient now”.
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Any thoughts? Did Steve become the manager cause he was the “right” person? Is it the people who are willing to defend “the system” of the workplace who higher ups choses to promote? Or did he have to become that way just to survive as a manager?