Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104120015
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN HARTE/ COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
During one fiscal quarter, it's not unheard of for the supervisor of a medium-size department to have plopped on his or her desk:
One defaulted baby sitter.
One senile parent.
One divorce.
One alcoholic.
One abused woman.
One serious disease.
> One teen-ager on drugs.
At 50, Samuel Friedman, president of AFCO Realty in Atlanta has seen it all. He's come to expect that crises at home inevitably breed disruption in jobs.
"It comes with the territory," he said. "Without question, it's the toughest part of any manager's assignment."
Since bosses have domestic cares of their own, it's little wonder that trying to provide comfort to subordinates while trying to keep the department running is a major source of stress.
Jeffrey Lynn Speller knows the issue. A Harvard psychiatrist, Speller's book, "Executives in Crisis," deals with mentally ill and addicted managers. Speller said that an overload of other people's distresses is bewildering. Business people were schooled to produce budgets and project specifications, not diagnoses and behavior modifications.
"When someone comes in cry- ing? At the end of their rope? I don't know how to react to that. I'm not good at it," said Donald Luger, president of Lockwood Green engineers.
But Speller is sympathetic.
"It's a problem [for managers], and it's increasing," he said. "And it will be a bigger problem as social services are cut back and as more and more problems are brought into the organization."
The sociological heart of the matter, of course, is change. During the last 50 years, responsibility for individuals shifted from the individuals themselves to their environment. And the responsibility for helping them adjust to real life has been transferred from families and churches to government and, increasingly as the century ends, to employers.
"There are so many government guidelines and laws about employer-employee relationships that [people] think the employer is responsible for everything and themselves for nothing," Luger said.
"There's an old saying - `Before Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an American who failed blamed himself. Afterward, he blamed the government or someone else.'
"I think, broadly, that managers should be interested in their employees. But to pay someone for a year while they're going through a personal crisis and their contribution to the business is minimal? I just don't think that's right," he said.
Right or not, the reality is that the job of "boss" is undergoing a subtle movement from authority figure to mentor and counselor.
The change is partly driven by management gurus preaching that, in a growing population of poorly educated individuals and working women, physical and emotional amenities must be offered to attract and keep good employees.
On the other hand, when every worker is a lawsuit waiting to be filed, being nice to people is more than the milk of human kindness. It's politics.
Still, as Friedman pointed out, very little of what is learned in graduate school can substitute for years of handling people. And today, supervisors barely past their second decade have no frame of reference for the problems that plague many of their subordinates - parenting wayward adolescents or handling frail, aging parents.
In fact, some managers are so full of information and so empty of wisdom that they're regarded as insensitive or cold, observers say. The emotional distance aggravates their own tensions and further distresses those who report to them.
"An inexperienced manager can feel the stress almost to the breaking point," Friedman said.
"It's the not knowing, the helplessness," said Speller. He insists that corporations must train their managers, not to be psychotherapists but to be adroit questioners who can direct a problem to the proper agency. Bosses must learn to recognize the line between having a problem and taking advantage, he said.
To Marilyn Moats Kennedy, who publishes "Kennedy's Career Strategist," managers of distressed employees tend to react to malfunctioning people in two ways: They deny that the work is suffering, and they put off dealing with the issue.
"The employee doesn't realize how far the work has dropped. It's the boss' job to say, `This isn't acceptable,' " Kennedy said. "If there's one thing that's mean-minded, it's being seriously dissatisfied with somebody for six months and saying nothing. Until you explode and shatter that person - which will happen if they're already emotionally distressed."
"I think it's important for companies to create an environment where people can discuss their personal problems with a supervisor," Friedman said. "The greatest cost we ever have is when we lose people. Nothing is as expensive as a human who's not functioning or who is painful to everybody."
by CNB