Caught in the middleby Chuck Violand

Some time ago, I was meeting with a manager of one of my clients.He was voicing his frustration about the difficult situation he found himself in as a manager:"He expects me to run my division and manage my people, but any time one of them doesn’t like what I ask him to do, he goes around me and straight to him. He knows he doesn’t have to perform for me because the boss will protect him. The only way I can get him to do anything is by becoming his friend and asking him to do things as a personal favor to me."This was a pretty emotional conversation spoken by an experienced manager who was in a lot of pain regarding his predicament.Imagine how painful and confusing this situation would have been for a first-time manager.Any serious manager would question how a business owner could allow such a condition to exist. But many owners do, although not always in such a flagrant manner.Frequently, I’ll see business owners lose good people and stifle the growth of their companies by mishandling management relationships within them.Here are two of the more common ways I see them do it, and how you can avoid it in your own company.Promotion and abandonmentFrequently, the new manager is charged with managing the people he used to work with side by side.When this promotion is handled correctly, it can be a great career move for the employee, and it can yield big benefits for the company.

When the owner gives the new manager the training, the tools and the support he needs to do his job, it can be rewarding for everyone involved.But, too often the promotion and follow-up training are mishandled.Rather than giving the new manager the training he needs to learn how to be a manager (as opposed to just being a loyal employee), the owner expects the new manager to learn these skills from the "school of hard knocks."After all, since that is frequently the owner’s alma mater, shouldn’t it be good enough for the new manager? Then, to make matters worse, if things don’t go well right from the start, the owner can become impatient and will sometimes respond by abandoning the new manager.The owner withdraws his support, and the new manager is hung out like a piñata to take shots from his former co-workers, after which the workers hand the bat to the owner so he can take a few shots of his own. Blurred lines of authority

Let’s start with the basics.Each employee in any organization can have only one boss, and every employee should know whom that person is.In start-up companies or very small businesses that line of authority is pretty clear — most employees report directly to the owner.But, as the business grows, and managers or supervisors are added, those lines can become blurred.Suddenly the owner doesn’t have direct authority over everyone in the company. Now he has to rely on the decision-making ability of the people he’s either hired or promoted as managers.This is where the lines get blurry.Many owners have a difficult time relinquishing their authority.Yes, they make the announcement to the company about the new promotion, they bring in the table from the warehouse and dust it off so the new manager has a desk of his own, and they might even have a cake to celebrate the occasion.But sometimes they’re not quite ready to hand over that authority to someone else. So they tell everybody in the company their door will still be open.Although the stated message here is that the owner still wants to stay in touch with his people, the implied message is: "If you don’t like the way the new manager is treating you, feel free to do an end-run around him and come and see me personally."Well, employees learn very quickly which one works better.You’ve seen kids do this in a family: If they don’t get what they want from one parent, they’ll go to the other one to see if they can get a more favorable outcome.Employees will do the same thing in a business if the rules aren’t firmly established from the start, and the lines of authority aren’t crystal clear and religiously adhered to.It’s become a cliché in business that if you’re going to give someone the responsibility to do a job, then you also need to give them the authority to make decisions.If you aren’t ready to give that authority to the person you’ve promoted, don’t give the promotion. Time and again I’ve seen owners cross over (I should say jump over) the lines of authority in their businesses because they can’t give up control.Every time they do this, it undermines the authority of the manager and screws things up in a big way.How much clearer can I state this? Stop meddling!If you’ve promoted someone to a management position, get out of the way and let him do his job.If he’s not doing his job the way the two of you laid it out for him, then address it with him.You can make life a lot easier for you and everyone in your organization if you follow the lines of authority. http://www.advantagecleaningteam.com or http://www.janiservu.com/