Stupid Mistakes Managers Make

HR expert Susan Heathfield, who covers Human Resources for About.com, focuses on the many ways that organizations mess up in dealing with people.

“They treat people like children and then ask why people fail so frequently to live up to their expectations. Managers apply different rules to different employees and wonder why workplace negativity is so high. People work hard and infrequently receive positive feedback.”

Heathfield has written an article on “Twenty Dumb Things Organizations Do to Mess Up Their Relationship With People.” Here are 10 of them:

· Add another level of hierarchy because people aren’t doing what they want them to do.
· Appraise the performance of individuals, and provide bonuses for the performance of individuals, and then complain that they cannot get their staff working as a team.
· Add inspectors and multiple audits because they don’t trust people’s work to meet standards.
· Fail to give people clear expectations so they know what they are supposed to do. Then they wonder why they fail.
· Create hierarchical, permission steps and other roadblocks that teach people quickly their ideas are subject to veto. (Then they wonder why no one has any suggestions for improvement.)
· Ask people for their opinions, ideas, and suggestions, and then fail to implement their suggestions or empower them to do so.
· Make a decision and then ask people for their input as if their feedback mattered.
· Find a few people breaking rules and company policies and chide everybody at company meetings rather than dealing directly with the rule breakers.
· Make up new rules for everyone to follow as a means to address the failings of a few.
· Provide recognition in expected patterns so that what started as a great idea quickly becomes entitlement.

Want more? You can read about all 20 blunders here.