Why I podcast about working towards an end to jackass management
By: Kris Keppeler
Tags: Change Management, Leadership, Stories, Better Leader, Changemaker

Through a different lens.

Designed by Kris Keppeler

If you’d like to listen rather than read this story, check out the episode on my podcast, Through a Different Lens.

I don’t hear many conversations in the women’s locker room at the gym. The one I heard yesterday prompted me to write this Through a Different Lens podcast. It’s sad, and I’m familiar with it.

Two strangers discussed being laid off from their job. One had just been, and the other had gone through it a few years before. The woman recently laid off was traumatized.

Her company got a new controller. She heard the new boss, a woman, targeted another employee for dismissal. She discovered her bullseye status when she mentioned her birthday the week before and received silence.

The next week, the department celebrated another employee’s birthday. And they fired her. Ah, this brought back such cringe-worthy memories of my corporate experience.

The definition of good leadership is difficult to pin down. But here are qualities that most, including me, agree on: helpful, trustworthy, good listener, and motivational. I certainly aspired to these qualities as a purchasing manager.

Managers like that controller cost the company money, as employee replacement costs start around $3400 for lower-wage jobs, and go up from there. The price for a bit of extra training for the employee is half that amount. Sitting down and communicating with that employee might be all that’s necessary.

I received a promotion at a company several years ago. The promotion included a “problem” departmental employee reporting to me. I successfully placated their recent “problem” internal customer, so that’s the likely reason I received this assignment.

The department supervisor and manager sat me down and instructed me to give him a hard time. They asked me to get him to resign. I nodded all the while thinking, “yeah, right, not doing that. I don’t treat people like that.”

Jerry, this employee, hated me from the moment I arrived at the company about three years before the promotion. Jerry and I had a heart to heart talk about his job, what he wanted from it, and his future in purchasing. We developed a good working relationship.

After I moved on to another job at another company, I heard Jerry went on to earn his purchasing certification. All it took to improve the “problem” employee and internal customer situation was a bit of communication: no browbeating or arguing, just polite conversation.

That promotion felt like being on a speeding train heading for the bridge that’s out. I told my supervisor it was a bad idea to no avail. I watched as two other promoted buyers were forced out by the manager.

Then it was my turn. Those six months were the worst of my purchasing career. I admit to not handling the situation well either.

I trained a new buyer, Amanda, and moved on to a new purchasing job. A year later, at my new job, I received a phone call from Amanda. She sobbed on the phone, asking me what she should do.

The call got uncomfortably weird. After only one year, Amanda was enduring the same treatment I had experienced. What could I tell her to do but to find another job?

The manager had gone through four buyers in two years. He got along with upper management; that’s all that counted. Not that he cost the company over $12k in employee replacement costs.

Now that you’ve heard one of my stories, what do you think? Is there a way to change this deluge of ongoing poor leadership? Most important, do you have an account of successfully dealing with this type of poor leadership?

I left the company, and that’s what most do. But I’m sure some of you are stuck with dealing with these jackasses.

Does forming a group to go to the manager above the jackass work? It got results at a small medical lab where I worked. Without telling me, all my co-workers complained en masse to the lab manager about our incompetent supervisor.

She received a dressing down. It likely helped she fancied herself an expert parasitologist and the lab couldn’t process parasitology tests for several months due to her incompetence. When her ability affected the bottom line, the management finally let her go.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m an idealist. But if my introverted soul could become a better manager, others can too.

My mission with this podcast is to highlight the skills necessary to be a good leader. And underline the change essential to end jackass management.

If you have an experience you’d like to share to support this goal, I’d love to hear it. Have you written an article about leadership and change? Please contact me so we can talk about using it for this podcast.

~Kris