Pointy-Haired Bosses

The characters in Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoons vividly display super-stereotypes of workplace denizens. Among them is Dilbert’s selfish, clueless, pointy-haired boss, who destroys morale and impedes progress.

We may encounter bosses who occasionally remind us of Dilbert’s pointy-haired guy, but my experience suggests that only a few self-employed business owners and a lot of tenured professors behave that badly and get away with it. Most supervisors are decent sorts who genuinely want to do a good job. They will have faults, as we all do. They will make mistakes, as we all do. Mainly what they do is supervise in their own style, doing the things that are most comfortable.

We can talk about good supervisory styles later. Some typical bad supervisory styles include micro-manager, fearful non-decider, over-delegator, under-delegator, over-demander, smoke blower, and screamer. You may enjoy some of these if your work preferences match your supervisor’s styles. For example ….

Steven sat staring at the graph paper on his desk. I could see that he had plotted one, and only one, point on the graph paper since I left him an hour ago. That was enough time for him to have completed the simple task of plotting the data table I had left him, but it was barely started. He said, “I’m ready for you to check my work.” He wanted me to check every plotted point before he went on to the next one. That day and the next, no matter how often I told Steven to do the whole job before asking me to check it, he needed affirmation of every step.

Sherri was Steven’s complete opposite. I’d sketch out the big picture for her, give her instructions for the first few steps, and off she went. When she came back, usually much sooner than expected, the task was complete, including detailed steps we hadn’t even discussed yet. Sometimes Sherri overlooked some detail that needed fixing but she got it done.

Sherri flourished under my supervision and went on to a great career. After two days, Steven went back to his old job, saying he couldn’t work for me. He was right.

It takes talent, knowledge, and effort to supervise people, resources, and projects. Good supervisors adjust their approach to account for each employee’s personality and ability. If an employee lacks the ability or self-confidence to work independently, the supervisor must provide detailed instructions, regular check-ins, and affirmation or correction. Steven, obsessed with avoiding mistakes, needed that kind of micro-managing from me. Sherri was capable, self-confident, and enjoyed getting things done with minimal supervision. She needed the freedom to work it out herself.

If I were a great supervisor, I would have given Steven the constant monitoring and affirmation that he craved. But I’m not, and I didn’t. Sherri and I worked well together, not because I was a great supervisor, but because her work style matched perfectly with my preferred supervisory style.

Next time we’ll continue an examination of bosses and look at how to manage them.