Comments on: Leadership by Proxy Causes Low Employee Engagement

By: Michelle Malay Carter

Michelle Malay Carter — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:38:51 +0000

Engagement Guy,

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I agree, the quality of the manager – direct report relationship is the largest catalyst for or deterrent to engagement.

Michelle

By: Employee Engagement Guy

Employee Engagement Guy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:06:56 +0000

Employee engagement has little to do with HR practices. It has more to do with leadership and management styles – if the culture is one where even a “small” employee gets a lot of responsibility, the manager recognizes them and works with them on an equal level, then the employee is going to be more engaged.

By: Michelle Malay Carter

Michelle Malay Carter — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:12:57 +0000

Eric,

I agree. Organizations don’t provide managers with what they need to be effective leaders.

Michelle

By: Eric Pennington

Eric Pennington — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:12:06 +0000

Management is hard, and leadership is even harder. That concept is rarely if ever discussed in corporate America. It’s like a game of make believe. For example, Bill’s handsome, young, has an MBA from a prestigious school and says all the right things. And if he slips up HR can fix it. Sound familiar?

With managers and leaders like Bill, is it any wonder that many companies are populated by the working dead.

By: Michelle Malay Carter

Michelle Malay Carter — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:03:18 +0000

Jim,

Thanks for the comment. I think managers find it attractive to give away their accountabilities because managerial authority isn’t what it used to be either. As we’ve taken away managers’ authority (to hire, fire, and reward), they’ve been glad to hand over their accountabilities too. This is why we struggle with accountability as well. Accountability must come with requisite authority.

Regards,

Michelle

By: Jim Stroup

Jim Stroup — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:01:16 +0000

Michelle,

A key motivator of this trend lies behind many others that promise simplistic managerial solutions to the fundamental managerial responsibility to manage human beings. I saw the item you referred to about outsourcing firings – it reminded me of a “Cheers” episode from long ago – is just an archetypical example of this.

Paul’s astute observation is germane, here. This sort of behavior allows managers to have it all ways: displacing real management with intellectually sterile analysis and wire-diagramming, taking credit when things go well, and outsourcing responsibility when they don’t.

The clock may be running down on this game, but that’s a tough call; there’s tremendous incentive to play it, and strong institutional (organizational and in the broader society) to encourage it.

Great catch and great post – thanks!

By: Michelle Malay Carter

Michelle Malay Carter — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:18:45 +0000

Thanks for the comment Paul. I love the metaphor!

Michelle

By: Paul Holmstrom

Paul Holmstrom — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:00:01 +0000

I completely agree with you. What we are seeing are managers outsourcing their core responsibilities and functions to HR, staff units and consultants, while maintaining their technical knowledge and actually working as specialists.

I have seen large organizations in reality run by staff units in HR and finance, like a hidden Soviet nomenklatura. If the company managed to recruit anybody who dared to question the hidden system, the nomenklatura very efficiently got the manager deposed.

Organizations need to have managers in place who do their own work.