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Demand Sensitivity Training

A woman who wrote me had the misfortune of working with the Boss from Yell. The manager, a disorganized workaholic, yelled at employees when they couldn’t stay late. She yelled at them when they asked for help. She yelled to get their attention. Yelling was her idea of staff development.

The insensitive behavior drove people away, yet it didn’t faze her. She wore the departures like badges of honor: “See. I don’t have to fire them. I’m good at making them quit.”

She apparently has a lot of company. In a recent Gallup poll of one million workers, a bad boss was the Number-1 reason cited for leaving a job. If you see a manager churning through employees, don’t just buy the line that good help is hard to find. Hold staff meetings to air concerns and take some of the managers’ subordinates to lunch to find out what is going on in their division. If you agree that the manager is a problem, then order her to take an anger-management course or other sensitivity training. If you take the time to find good people, the last thing you want is a manager who nullifies those good efforts.