{"id":306,"date":"2011-08-19T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/when-managers-are-vague\/"},"modified":"2011-08-19T10:33:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T10:33:00","slug":"when-managers-are-vague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/when-managers-are-vague\/","title":{"rendered":"When Managers Are Vague-2011 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a re-post of something I wrote over 3 years ago.&#0160; Had a conversation yesterday with a peer and we still see way too much of this:<\/p>\n<p><em>Talked to a friend yesterday who works for a large organization with many deadlines and targets to hit.&#0160; She&#39;s a star in the company&#39;s eyes.&#0160; And like other &quot;stars,&quot;&#0160;she tends to get access to places and people that average performers don&#39;t.&#0160; She takes advantage of the opportunity-in a good way.&#0160; What&#39;s frustrating this star is managment&#39;s lack of clarity around directives.&#0160; Management has taken the approach of &quot;need to know basis.&quot;&#0160; That might work at the CIA, but not in an organization made up of performance-workers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Funny thing about star performers, they demand clarity.&#0160; It isn&#39;t given often with management.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Why the dichotomy?&#0160; A languishing leadership\/management culture&#0160;as far as I can see.&#0160; The company may have a viable product, long-standing customer base,&#0160; and a model that&#39;s effective in good times and bad.&#0160; But getting managers who understand how to lead great performers is tough.&#0160; Here are a few reasons:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>High insecurity on the part of the manager.&#0160; Maybe they were taught (erroneously) that they were supposed to be the smartest gal\/guy in the room.&#0160; The reality of this can be crushing to some. <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The manager may talk a good game around diversity, but leading diverse people in real-life does not come through. <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The manager has atrophied in their leadership and just wants&#0160;people to follow orders. <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>When managers are vague, it creates an environment of vigilantes.&#0160; Everyone (star performers and bottom-feeders) wants to take control based on how they need to survive.&#0160; In many ways, the manager has become nothing more than a body in a suit.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Restoring (assuming it was there some time in the past) clarity is vital.&#0160; To not to do this would be organizational suicide.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a re-post of something I wrote over 3 years ago.&#0160; Had a conversation yesterday with a peer and we still see way too much of this: Talked to a friend yesterday who works for a large organization with many deadlines and targets to hit.&#0160; She&#39;s a star in the company&#39;s eyes.&#0160; And&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,4,123,170],"tags":[23,693,1225,771,1227,177,624,1224,1226,1223,67],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career-2","category-coaching","category-leadership-development","category-management","tag-career","tag-clarity","tag-clear-communication","tag-corporate-america","tag-high-performers","tag-management-2","tag-managers","tag-middle-management","tag-performance","tag-senior-management","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}