The Respectful Manager

The Guide to Successful Management

Terry A. Sheridan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351393249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

Many people are confused by mixed messages from their managers. About 85% of the pool of managers are malevolent, who do not care about the organisation and use the structure for their own needs of power and control. We know what a good manager looks like, but in complex social interactions within organisations this can be confused with the manipulations of the malevolent managers, from CEO to the lowest grade supervisor.

The Respectful Manager: The Guide to Successful Management is about the application of the Executive Impression Management type of the Respectful Manager, derived from new ground-breaking research regarding fraudster managers. It explains clearly and precisely what a good manager looks like and behaves like with their co-workers. In this book, the foundations are laid to understand and recognise a Respectful Manager. This is critical for management training purposes and for managerial recruitment and promotion procedures. For those looking at increasing profitability, increasing competitive edge, and engaging their workforce in fulfilling work, the Respectful Manager is the key.

This book is a must read for those who aspire to management roles, including senior management, as a guide to the very best practice in the field.

1    Introduction to the code of Executive Impression Management

Good management. What is it? How do we achieve it? People seem to know it when they see it but ask them directly and they are lost for words and at best shrug their shoulders. I know this, as I have tried. It is seemingly intangible, a nice glowing feeling that you get when you work with a manager that you like. There is a great deal of information about what a good manager is, including top ten lists ad nauseam, some compiled by fairly good sources too. But it still is a melange of what constitutes good management. Authors contradict others, the media pick up the latest research and then drop it when another study comes along. Information about good management is about as confusing as looking up what is a good diet these days. One theme that is apparent is that there is no cohesive collection of thought.

So why have I written a book about it? Well, that is because I accidentally found what good managerial behaviour is through a doctoral research study concerning managerial fraud. It is the first time that good management has had a strong grounding in a theory which is satisfactory, compared to what has been offered by scholars and practitioners. I found that there was a strong contingent of managers who lie to their co-workers and pretend to be good managers, whereas in reality they are not. Once you take the bad managers out of the equation, only good managers remain, and that is what I found, but they all share common characteristics. There will be probably some bad managers reading this who will take on the latest ideas and apply them in their workplace so that they can deceive you. I can assure you that their attempts will fail once you understand the theory behind this book. I go into some detail for that very reason. A bogus manager just cannot keep wearing the mask of a good manager for long, and once you are aware of what to look for, you will be well armed against deception.

But it does beg the question: why do managers go to such lengths to deceive others? If they are not defrauding the company, when it is understandable that they wouldn’t want others to latch on to what they are doing, why would they do so? Managers are not spies, who have to live a dangerous life in order to survive to carry on with their deceit, motivated perhaps by ideology or money or a coveted citizen status. They are ordinary human beings who have desired the position or have been thrust into it, without having a clue to what to do.

I think a lot of this behaviour that we see is down to the fact that they do not want others to see them as they really are. Hence the need for status to show others who they aspire to be. Company cars, large bonuses, sometimes housing or lower interest rates for loans and mortgages are all factors which reward this deceitful behaviour. Perhaps this is accidental in the system design, but anyone can get into prestigious positions if they lie enough. We have seen this with doctors operating without licences; CEOs who have been exposed on their credentials, or rather, lack thereof; pilots who pretend they have been to flying school when they have not; presidents and members of parliament who lie about their expenditures to deceive their electorates. The rewards are big enough for many people to want to deceive.

But there is something fundamentally missing from this activity, and that is that the rewards are not transferable to the after-life if you believe in that, and if you do not, then you know that it is impossible to fill your tomb with riches like the Pharaohs, because you really can’t take it with you. No, there is something logically wrong with that status-seeking way of life. There is no consideration about leaving their footprints in the sand. Have they done any good on this planet, did they help anyone? Did they look after their families and children or their community? Unfortunately, all that activity in order to receive consumer goods is wrong when the organisation is used for their own needs and gain. Call me an idealist, I really do not mind, but is that what life is all about? Whoever dies with the most toys wins? I am asking such questions because the malevolent managers that my Executive Impression Management theory describes do not think in the long term: with them it’s here and now, with a five-year plan at best. It’s all about getting to the top.

When you look at organisations there is disturbing activity going on; employees talk about bullying, constructive dismissals, sexist behaviour, exploitation at its worst, all at the hands of managers. So, if they win all the toys, then why, it must be asked, do they abuse people and allow this sort of behaviour to continue? Is having lots of status symbols and living in grand mansions not enough? No, there is something more deeply disturbing at work here. Rampant consumerism is only a symptom; there are more awful behaviours that are happening.

It seems that we almost expect organisations to be hideous, and finding one that is not is like a breath of fresh air. They are certainly not the norm. Most people put up with managerial shenanigans and try to get on with their life, even though work becomes a stressful experience. Sleep is affected, family relationships become disrupted, friends become distant. Over a length of time stress kicks in with a lowered immune response, which leads to long term illness and early death. It is a fact that men die earlier than women; it has been explained in part by the protective influence of oestrogen, but there may very well be a different explanation. Women tend not to be in the workforce as long as their male counterparts, due to child rearing, aged parental care and other factors. This leads to part-time and casual work, so their participation in a workplace tends to be lower over their lifespan.

Certainly, we know that stress for males and females can lead to smoking and excessive drinking of alcohol, and these two factors alone are definitely linked to cancers and heart disease. There are many possibilities, but none have looked thoroughly at the effect of work on lifespan, apart from the famous Whitehall studies on British civil servants, where they found that the lower the grade of worker, the shorter the lifespan (Marmot et al., 1978). This could be partly due to bullying as it is now recognised, but this was not a factor considered in the first study.

Considering how much work effects our lives, there are few studies that have had the resources to look at this in depth and in a long-term series analysis like the Whitehall studies. This means we end up with a variety of pieces of a jigsaw but no overall picture. Even the pieces are contradictory, which leads into impossible sense-making of what is truly going on. The Swedes have been interested in workplace bullying for a long time, being the leaders in research and scholarly work (for instance, Einarsen, 1999). They have found that there is also long-term depression that outlasts a bullying episode. The Whitehall studies do show psychiatric morbidity, again associated with lower grades; it is a pity that they did not take into account bullying behaviours that would have existed at that time. You have to look deeply into managerial behaviour to understand what is truly going on in their minds.

When we venture out into our first job, we have no idea what is going to happen. We are not prepared to enter such a vicious world as a young adult. Ideas such as internships and work experience are preparatory in some way, but we do not tell our children what really goes on, neither do we arm them with effective measures to prevent workplace violence.

We have learnt that giving children sex education has reduced to some extent the number of teenage pregnancies, but we fail to teach them about what to expect in the workplace. Such a syllabus could contain strategies to cope with life in the lowest work echelon; how to deal with a bully; how to identify depression and anxiety; how to perform under stress; and how to whistle-blow safely. When I share my theory with others who are in the educational environment, they often say we should be teaching this in our schools! Of course we should. And I would be happy to have input into such a project. If it means we can redesign our workplaces so that these bad behaviours are curtailed then we can win the fight against workplace violence perpetrated against the unwary and the ill-equipped, which is all of us in our very first job.

This book describes behaviour that is opposite to what is found in the average workplace. It is a guide to what good management is and what it is fundamentally about. This is a handbook designed for those who wish to become managers, those who are already managers but having difficulties, those who design MBA and other business programs, human resources people, and just the likes of you and me who are interested in the dynamics of workplaces. In other words, those who are concerned with propagating good management. It is sadly a rarity.

We have seen a burst of activity by scholars trying to understand management from the 1970s onwards. Many fields of research, in psychology, sociology, social psychology, economics and even politics, have all had their say on business management. But still, after all these years of intensive effort we cannot put our finger on the concept. We know what they are meant to do, it is written in their job descriptions, but a good manager? That is where the effort ends up confused. It is not possible to write it down in a job description: applicants would laugh at the wording ‘be a good manager’. How can that be done? Let alone measure job performance? Well, the good news is we can write down what it means: it solely ties up with the concept of respect. This popped up in the middle of my research and I explored it further and discovered a simple but elegant formula for any manager to become a really good manager.

The function of management

A manager is often described as a steward of an organisation and fundamentally will look after an organisation and its resources; this includes those who work within the organisation. The role of managers came into being with the beginnings of the agrarian revolution approximately 8,000 years ago. There came a need for someone to look after extra unused food resources after the traditional hunting and gathering of food came to an end. The previous co-operatively based social system gave way to producing more food than the extended family could eat within a few days. As soon as there was surplus production over and above what was to be consumed, certain people were appointed by the group leader to look after the resources on behalf of the community. For instance, a shepherd looking after the community’s flock of sheep. Later there came elders and leader-kings who claimed all the resources in a short period of time. Many Mesopotamian pottery pieces and stones were covered with writing. These are in fact lists of resources, the start of basic accounting, which the manager had to provide, or in the more up-to-date phrase, ‘account for’.

We can trace the development of the managerial function of stewardship of assets together with accounting, in the changes from the Neolithic era. And these twin functions have expanded into today’s world with the addition of six more core functions. According to Quinn (Quinn, 1988) there are eight managerial functions of a good steward of an organisation. These include monitoring and tending to the administrative detail; co-ordinating activity; brokering resources through networking within and outside the organisation; ensuring production of work; directing others; enhancing innovation; understanding and mentoring of the human element in the workplace; and facilitating commitment with diverse people or units of work.

It does not take much imagination to see that some of these early managers would have taken advantage of their position and been fraudulent, and indeed the earliest record of a case was recorded in about 360 bc (Calhoun, 1924). It involved Xenothemis, a sea captain who became involved with an insurance scam. He was in collusion with a merchant who wanted to stage the sinking of Xenothemis’ ship and claim for the ‘lost’ cargo. Even in those early days, schemes were in place to defraud the people of Athens by not actually sending the cargo and then claiming the insurance which was set up by the traders in the first place. The goods in reality were stored at the departure point, so there would be no actual loss. The passengers overheard crew members talking about the scuttling of their ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, and they mutinied and took over the ship. The merchant involved was killed and the captain survived only to land himself in prison, as it was deemed that being told what to do was not an excuse.

Most managers pretend

In our social history there are archetypes of good and evil, the stuff that fairy tales are made of and fables to disseminate moral stories. Jung identified the Trickster as being one of the dominant archetypes that appear in our literature and thinking. There is a need for our psyches, he proposed, to develop an archetype so that we can identify a part of ourselves that we do not wish to acknowledge. It is as if there is a propensity in all of us to steal and deceive others. The archetype’s purpose is to put it in our minds that we may admire the trickery involved, say with a magician, but fundamentally we believe that it is dishonest. Therefore, the concept of managerial fraud is able to be defined and discussed; at least that is what I thought when I started my study.

What I was amazed at was the lack of anything substantial, including there being no definition of managerial fraud. The literature confined itself to employee or occupational fraud, not differentiating that managers commit this deception as well. Even with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ annual reports (ACFE, 2018) on the state of business affairs in the USA, managerial fraud has not been teased out of the figures presented. That meant I had to put together a definition of managerial fraud myself, as if this was a new phenomenon! The Trickster actually evaded us from our conceptual development in the workplace. This is suggested by the very light sentences that fraudulent managers received before the collapse of Enron in the United States. It was called ‘white collar’ fraud, and this was seen as not as bad as other types of stealing. The ACFE reports did not even use that term, as ‘white collar’ is a sociological term that denotes managers and clerks, that is, in a typical manufacturing setting, those individuals who are not part of the means of production but who regulate it.

The Balinese, a people that I have intensively researched, have the notion of the Trickster in their religious ceremonies. They understand the world in terms of good and evil and that we contain both parts; therefore, if someone does something bad, the bad side is showing. One of their most important ceremonies is that of Nyepi – the day of silence, the day before teenage boys and young adult males gather together to fight the Ogoh-Ogoh, which represents the bad spirits located in the depths of the earth. The large, horrifying statues are carried to their death, which is a burning usually on the beach, or if inland by a river or a spring. These are terrifying effigies, and they take months of hard work to make. Once the Ogoh-Ogohs have been burnt, the earth is cleansed and that means that the good spirits can come down and walk upon it without fear. Everyone stays indoors on Nyepi, and there is no talking or eating or travelling. Even the airport of Denpasar is closed. Each family has just one candle to light their night time. The silence is time to reflect on their deeds over the last year. The children are let off these restrictions, but all others are under strict observation by the local religious police. The children, while being saved from the rigours of Nyepi, learn very early on that we all have the bad spirits as well as good spirits at hand. Furthermore, the bad spirits must not be indulged and must be kept away. The strength of Nyepi is that on the following day there is an asking of forgiveness from any person who has been wronged in the past year. This is usually after the morning ceremony and the trip is undertaken with foods which are offered to the gods. The thing that makes this stand out is that the person who has been wronged is obligated to accept the gifts and forgive the person concerned.

This creates a balance of right and wrong, through forgiveness and reparation. Therefore, the Trickster is kept at bay for another year. I asked once when we were undertaking a blessing of our office why were they throwing away the small offerings to the bad spirits. I had noted that there was a deliberate move to carry these tiny offerings away. They included a small bowl of their home brewed alcoholic drink of tuak, and the reply was that the bad spirits will be tricked into taking those offerings about 20 meters away from the building, and therefore not visit us. The Trickster is therefore tricked through the artful ways of the Balinese. I will refer to forgiveness and reparation further in this book, as it is an important part of a Respectful Manager’s morality.

But first I must set out and explain the theory that cracks the code of silence and deception among managers. This will make clearer how the Trickster managers work in our organisations. They may not be stealing the business’s money, but they are up to no good. And the sad thing is that many do not realise that they are doing this and for the ones that do, the immense amount of harm that they commit.

2 How the Respectful Manager type emerged

This chapter introduces the brand new Executive Impression Management theory. I will try to explain it without the technical jargon that is always a feature of social science research. Ideally, even a layperson will be able to understand, as the theory is both elegant and simple, looking at underlying factors that have been touched on but mostly ignored by scholars and commentators.

Good practice

For many decades now, there have been ideas developed to help us understand good practice management (for example, Sutton, 2010). The problems with these theories are that a clever manager can read the textbook, learn what is required but in reality, continue to be the type of manager that no one wants. If a manager is aspiring to the top ranks it may suit him to adopt the latest strategy so as to appear to be a ‘good’ manager. Many co-workers will complain that the manager knows the words but does not ‘walk the talk’. They may see through the deception but often their bosses will not. Therefore, promotion takes place for these managers while discontentment and despair permeates the workplace.

Lack of predictive power

Another problem with these theories is that they do not seem to be able to predict in short or long term, what type of management behaviour will arrive with a new manager. Lack of predictive power is a disturbing fact, as the adoption of certain behaviours will confuse others at times of promotion, or even at the selection process of recruitment, as to who the manager really is. For instance, a manager may use the right words at interview in order to gain entry to an organisation, and this can lead to severe disruption within businesses and non-profits whereby the manager having access to the firm’s assets will steal, even for years on end. At best, the new recruit works inefficiently and will waste the organisation’s assets.

Bias

We have also seen theories that emphasise masculine Anglo-Saxon behaviours, perhaps subconsciously, and thereby exclude women and those of a different ethnic background. Some very early management theory, for instance Frederick Taylor’s work The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), started out with the premise of managers being male. The scientists themselves were male and wore white coats to differentiate themselves from male managers. In the 1950s John Maynard Keynes warned us of the problem of gendered management in a different context: ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood’, he wrote,

Indeed the world is run by little else. Practical men,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• First aid
• 1. Introduction to the code of Executive Impression Management
• 2. How the Respectful Manager type emerged
• 3. Use of power and consistency as factors of the Respectful type
• 4. Description and characteristics of the Respectful Manager
• 5. The fancy dress ball: How the Malevolent Managers confuse others
• 6. How to identify the Respectful Manager
• 7. Are you a Respectful Manager?
• 8. Aspiring to be a Respectful Manager?
• 9. How to develop Respectful Managers
• 10. Moving organisations forward to being Respectful workplaces
• 11. Conclusion
• References
• Index