Frequency of boss' visits

[timo]

My 2nd thread I start in 10 years, I believe. Not sure if it's a worthwhile topic, but beating the last one should be easy. And I found it suitable for getting random input by people I've never met:

 

In your opinion, should the boss of a small group of employees visit the employees to ask them what they are doing and how it is working out (and help solve a problem at hand if required, of course). If so, how often would you see fit? If not, what kind of interaction/feedback do you envision? In either case, what is your good or bad experiences on communication with direct superiors or, in case you are the boss, with your staff? More generally: How would a group go about to find a good solution to this issue.

 

Of course, this strongly depends on the actual group. So for example consider this scenario:

- Young non-university research group (programming/engineering, no lab experiments)

- One group leader ("boss"), two post-docs, two PhD students, four regular scientists, two students.

- Group leader has technical knowledge but is mainly responsible for budget and work resource scheduling and human resource development. The post-docs mainly perform managing tasks and are scientific advisors to the PhD students. The six other staff do the "actual work" and usually need to be told what to do somewhat explicitly (by group leader, post-docs or project managers from other groups). The students are usually given non-critical tasks by staff.

- Except for management, even small tasks often involve many people. High dependence on the others' work and progress.

 

This detailed setup is chosen on purpose, of course. So I'd like opinions on it. However, I also welcome thoughts on other kinds of groups/situations, especially if they are thoughts from personal experience and real-world examples. I am also interested in general comments on the topic, but I would prefer them to be more concrete than "have to find out what works best" or "it depends": of course it does depend on, e.g., the employees' personalities, but knowing that is no help for the group.

 

[CharonY]

This is not easy to answer, it really depends a lot on the personalities involved as well as the types of projects the groups are working on. If you are not very amiable as boss, being around too much can put too much pressure on them (though being too friendly can also have detrimental effects). Another critical element is the type of deadlines/milestones/deliverables as well as how hard and specific they are. The very same group composition may have to be managed very differently if you have short-term specific goals or log-term exploratory ones, for example.

 

From my viewpoint (academic position) the strategy that works best for me to be as hands-on as necessary, as hands-off as possible. This requires that you (the boss that is) have an idea about how the persons are working and tweak accordingly. I tend to have group as well as project meetings. The first is usually short and deals with stuff that everyone may need (e.g. supplies) the project only has those people that are involved (or are interested). I create negotiate workplans and milestones with everyone involved in a particular project and ask to be notified if something unexpected happens. I keep a closer tab (with more defined and closer milestones) for new/inexperienced group members, and provide more open plans for those cases where I know in what pace they work. Outside of that I generally let them do their thing and only step in if I think that someone is losing track.

I try not to micromanage them (which especially bugs more experienced researchers), but I always expect them to come to me when they hit a snag. It is often really hard not to micromanage, especially if you see that you could solve a particular problem much faster, but that defies the reason of having a group. At some point you just have to let go.

 

I have colleagues in companies that work on much shorter projects. For that they tend to have daily meetings in the morning where the jobs for the day are distributed (or just to re-affirm distribution) as not to waste time. In area where processes are established there is much more micromanaging (or rather, auditing) to ensure everything is followed to the letter, etc.

 

Unfortunately, this is really more an art than anything else, but a few (trivial and random) things to keep in mind are:

- never criticize an individual in front of the group. Nothing good will ever come from it

- do not micromanage, it will eat up your time, create dependency and decrease morale (usually)

- be approachable, try to be a mentor (tell them what you wished you knew when you had their position), but do not a boss or a friend

- do provide criticism in a positive way

- negotiate goals. That way the other party is also invested in reaching it (i.e. they are not just doing it because you said so)

- have realistic goals, tweak to the ability of the worker (push but do not crush)

- never assume things (e.g. assume that a phd student had certain degrees/courses and thus should know about a certain aspect). Communicate and make sure.

- if there cross dependencies between different people, make sure that both see that their input is valued and important. Never have a favorite.

Edited October 10, 2013 by CharonY

[Tridimity]

In your opinion, should the boss of a small group of employees visit the employees to ask them what they are doing and how it is working out (and help solve a problem at hand if required, of course). If so, how often would you see fit? If not, what kind of interaction/feedback do you envision?

 

 

I think the important thing is not so much creating fixed meeting times and agendas but that the supervisor/boss be both available and approachable. Personally, I had quite a bad experience in my previous job, although that may be due largely to having a different expectation to my colleagues regarding the way in which group work ought to be conducted. My actual boss, as stated in the job advertisement for the role, held a very senior position within not only our Faculty but also the University. As such, and understandably, he did not have much time for me as a very junior member of staff in his group. Supervisory duties were effectively delegated to a different PI with whom I did not get along and who was very close with the post-doc alongside whom I was working. The post-doc, in turn, did not care to consult me much on anything work-related, so that it was really a very morale sapping top-down instruction hierarchy. 'Do this, don't ask why, don't expect me to discuss the Science with you, [and definitely don't complain!]'. The only time I would see my actual boss was 1 hour per week, in a group setting, meaning that it was not feasible to raise confidential or sensitive matters. On two occasions I met him on a 1:1 basis, but doing that involved booking his time through his PA (like I said, he was a very busy man). The point is, although he was approachable and I liked him immensely as a person, he was not really available. This meant that when the top-down structure and unhealthy clique dynamics of the group finally imploded, it was too late to rectify the problems, the damage had been done a long time ago. I no longer work there, thank goodness.

 

So, employees need to feel comfortable approaching their boss, and the boss needs to be available.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Tridimity

[CharonY]

Unfortunately availability cannot always be guaranteed (in one of my jobs I met my formal supervisor roughly four times a year, though for me it actually worked), depending on their role and available infrastructure.

However, you also raise an additional number of important points. One keyword is expectation. Manage and communicate expectations well. This goes both ways, i.e. what postdocs and phds may want from you as mentor (which usually boils down to help them along in their careers) and what your expectations are to them. Never assume that things are obvious (as I already mentioned, really that can kill projects like nothing else).

Another, even more complicate aspect is managing group dynamics. Considering the size of the group mentioned in OP one has to be careful that no cliques are formed. Animosity between sub-groups or even individual can break a group and reduce productivity pretty much to zero.

Strive to create (realistic) scenarios in which the success for a given member translates to the benefit for the whole group (this goes back to negotiating expectations). There are PIs who think it is a good idea to foster competition within a group. I wholeheartedly disagree. Another aspect to remember is that often in scientific settings you may get divas. Managing these persons can be very tricky. Also, while managing people one has to be aware that technical competence is not the only thing you look out for when hiring. The potential group members should have basic sets of soft skill or demonstrate willingness to acquire them. Having a group if highly competent people that use their intelligence to mob each other is barely more productive than hiring a bunch of badgers with diarrhea.

Edited October 11, 2013 by CharonY

[Tridimity]

Another, even more complicate aspect is managing group dynamics. Considering the size of the group mentioned in OP one has to be careful that no cliques are formed. Animosity between sub-groups or even individual can break a group and reduce productivity pretty much to zero.

Strive to create (realistic) scenarios in which the success for a given member translates to the benefit for the whole group (this goes back to negotiating expectations). There are PIs who think it is a good idea to foster competition within a group. I wholeheartedly disagree. Another aspect to remember is that often in scientific settings you may get divas. Managing these persons can be very tricky. Also, while managing people one has to be aware that technical competence is not the only thing you look out for when hiring. The potential group members should have basic sets of soft skill or demonstrate willingness to acquire them. Having a group if highly competent people that use their intelligence to mob each other is barely more productive than hiring a bunch of badgers with diarrhea.

 

Agreed. I would add that, if you expect your employees to be well-rounded and to employ soft skills, rather than being purely technical - then provide them with opportunities for growth in their work role. If you treat people like a means to an end, like a piece of machinery, you will get the response of a piece of machinery! The clique issue is equally important. Employees require healthy relationships and friendships with their colleagues if they are to be happy. Speaking from experience, one way not to encourage this, is to place a new start in a room full of pre-existing cliques and two-person friendships that have been built on years of bonding. There is no way, as a previous outsider, to break into those circles of friendship, because intruding on pre-existing friendship pairs makes one or both parties in the friendship feel threatened. More often than not, any opportunity to get that far is impossible anyhow. Also not a good idea to have a high degree of turnover of staff, such that a new start becomes attached to one person who then leaves, and then to another person, who then leaves, and so on. The person will eventually give up on trying to make friendships under these conditions. Oh, and try to have people on a similar level in the working hierarchy, so that they have peers to befriend - rather than leaving them with the only option of trying to forge a friendship with those two levels removed from their own (not easy at all, maybe even impossible). Communication is absolutely key - all employees must be listened to and must know that they are being listened to.

[CharonY]

A friend of mine (who works in a company in a non-science role) basically said that the reason why academia is so ineffective is because many foster infighting (who gets on which paper, who gets to evaluate which data, whose name is on grants. who is allowed to write grants) rather than creating win-win situations. If everyone benefits from everyone else, being an arsehole just hurts yourself.

Edited October 11, 2013 by CharonY

[timo]

Thank you both for your comments so far. They are a bit stretching the scope of the question I asked but interesting to read, regardless (it's the lounge after all, not a science sub-forum). I'd still like to put the issue of the group leader actively seeking out the other group members on a regular basis into the light of what has been said so far. And in my original context, I believe some differences are due to the research group being non-academia (I wrote non-university, but really meant being very close to industrial applications): First of all, from my experience it is not realistic to believe that employees will actively seek out help when they need is. Some people walk off to ask someone for help when they are too lazy to put their question into Google, some tend to be stuck for days without wanting to bother other's with their problems. And from my own perspective: I, too, do not always know when exactly to ask for help. But admittedly, I never felt that an unannounced supervisor's "what do you do, how is it going?" visit helped me much, since I tend not to find the proper answers/questions so quickly.

 

I forgot the second point while commuting to work without this post being finished ...

[swansont]

I work in a group of five people, and have the office next to my supervisor's. We see each other on a daily basis, so the "how often do you interact with your boss" is moot. There's not much of a way to avoid contact, if that was desired. All of our offices and the lab are in the same part of a single building. I'm also the second most senior person in the group, so I get a share of the paperwork, simply by knowing some of the ins and outs of the bureaucracy, and filling in when the boss is gone, so we chat about that type of stuff often.

 

One of the important dynamics we have is that "I'm stuck" carries no stigma with it. Everybody gets stuck, everybody needs help with their tasks from time to time and our education/background similarities means most people can be of some help with problems. We have weekly meetings to keep everyone current with individual projects, but important steps forward (or back) are usually known to all fairly quickly because of our small size. It has also helped that for the majority of the time we had no significant personality conflicts. The period where this was an issue was pretty toxic for us, until the person who wanted/needed a change of scenery found a new job and announced he was leaving. (It was actually worse for those two weeks in some ways, since he gave no f***s whatsoever. Huge sigh of relief after he left.)

 

Your hypothetical sounds a lot more like my first postdoc, where people were spread out and the two professors rarely came into the lab. That's when we relied on our group meetings to keep current with other aspects of the experiment. Since I was an atomic physics person at an accelerator lab, the co-PIs and I didn't have a lot to talk about when things got jammed up. It was up to us postdocs to figure out how to do things not involving the nuclear/particle physics.

[CharonY]

 

 

First of all, from my experience it is not realistic to believe that employees will actively seek out help when they need is. Some people walk off to ask someone for help when they are too lazy to put their question into Google, some tend to be stuck for days without wanting to bother other's with their problems. And from my own perspective: I, too, do not always know when exactly to ask for help. But admittedly, I never felt that an unannounced supervisor's "what do you do, how is it going?" visit helped me much, since I tend not to find the proper answers/questions so quickly.

 

 

Companies may be a bit different as the workers there seem to view themselves less in a training situation as compared to academia. In these situations the most common strategy I have heard is to request updates or have project meetings rather than making the round. The latter is sometimes understood as a matter of exerting dominance and/or favoritism. It does boil down to having milestones against which progress can be benchmarked. That way it is easier to spot when someone needs assistance, even if the person may not actually be aware of. If there is no specific set goal bringing up performance or trying to help someone getting back on track may be perceived as criticism as the goal now appears to be arbitrary.

 

But more specific to the question, if you need to keep tabs on things, a formalized setting (i.e. meeting) is better as it allows people to prepare themselves and individuals are not singled out. Creating good meetings (as opposed to massive time-destroying wormholes) is an art in itself, though.

 

Just to reinforce (and of course, this is just my experience), in a setting where there is a power imbalance (i.e. boss vs. employee) and beyond a certain group size, walking up on them is almost never perceived in a positive way, unless you are super charismatic and have a fantastic group dynamic going on. In your mind it may appear that you swoop in and boost everyone's morale and increase productivity. However, if they are already reluctant to ask for help, then it is more likely that it is perceived as criticism and meddling.

Edited October 11, 2013 by CharonY

[iNow]

Often, the boss is not even in the same state or the country as the staff member. I think their proper role should be to confirm deadlines are being met, the work done is high enough quality, and to ask, "Is there anything I can do to help you? Are there any obstacles to your success I can help clear?" A weekly quick check-in works in my experience, with a monthly or quarterly operations review that dives deeper into progress and risks.

[imatfaal]

Thank you both for your comments so far. They are a bit stretching the scope of the question I asked but interesting to read, regardless (it's the lounge after all, not a science sub-forum). I'd still like to put the issue of the group leader actively seeking out the other group members on a regular basis into the light of what has been said so far. And in my original context, I believe some differences are due to the research group being non-academia (I wrote non-university, but really meant being very close to industrial applications): First of all, from my experience it is not realistic to believe that employees will actively seek out help when they need is. Some people walk off to ask someone for help when they are too lazy to put their question into Google, some tend to be stuck for days without wanting to bother other's with their problems. And from my own perspective: I, too, do not always know when exactly to ask for help. But admittedly, I never felt that an unannounced supervisor's "what do you do, how is it going?" visit helped me much, since I tend not to find the proper answers/questions so quickly.

 

I forgot the second point while commuting to work without this post being finished ...

 

 

"what do you do, how is it going?" - If a supervisor has to ask what someone does then she is failing in her supervisory role. My office is small (between 10 and 20 depending on the projects being handled) and I am trusted by my principals to know what my employees are doing, how good they are at these main tasks, and their propensity to ask for help. The good manager (and I regret that I am not) knows who needs help before they know themselves. I run things by the numbers, checking results, and confirming schedules and have little innate sense that an employee is struggling; however I have worked for/with those who have an empathy that allows them to spot a superior/colleague/employee who is out of their depth with no reference to procedure nor results - a quick non-specific chat and a sure knowledge that something is amiss. But whether you are gifted or merely diligent in identifying an employee in need of assistance; a manager fails their role if they do not understand what their employees do and how that integrates with the efforts of their colleagues to provide a result for the enterprise in general

[Ophiolite]

As often as necessary to achieve the following:

• Ensure they understand what they are meant to be doing.
• Ensure they know how to do it
• Ensure they have the tools to do it
• Ensure they understand the importance of what they are doing
• Ensure they understand that they have your full support and are available, within reason, when they need you
• Ensure they know you are interested in their work and in them

But not so often that:

• They think you are micro-managing
• They think you don't trust them
• They think you have nothing better to do

 

And that, as previous posts have pointed out, varies from day to day, task to task and individual to individual.

 

Read Hershey and Blanchard on this topic.

[CharonY]

Excellent and concise post.

[Tridimity]

Frankly I would have liked to have sat with my boss all day

[John Cuthber]

I have heard it said that, if you have the right staff, you just have to ask them to do something, then get out of their way.

It's a crass oversimplification of course, but it's not utterly devoid of reason.

[Tridimity]

I have heard it said that, if you have the right staff, you just have to ask them to do something, then get out of their way.

It's a crass oversimplification of course, but it's not utterly devoid of reason.

 

 

Mostly true, so long as the staff have the relevant training and skills necessary to achieve their objectives independently. This breaks down when the staff depend, for reasons beyond their own control, on the co-operation of staff from other departments in order to complete a task. For example, in my previous job, completion of a certain task required the oversight of staff from a collaborating department however attempting to get them to agree to the logistics of times to meet and perform the experiment, they would ignore my enquiries. After trying multiple times, I had to refer it to managerial level, who then claimed there had been "miscommunication". I suppose, if you call ignoring all contact 'miscommunication'! On another occasion, I organised the logistics of an experiment that I was carrying out with two other people, asked them to confirm the details. They then agreed among themselves their own time to carry up follow-up work. Not surprisingly, nobody listened to my side of things. Management sides with management. I hate working with people like that. Would have been easier to do the experiment on my own.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Tridimity

[timo]

"what do you do, how is it going?" - If a supervisor has to ask what someone does then she is failing in her supervisory role. [...] The good manager [...] knows who needs help before they know themselves. I run things by the numbers, checking results, and confirming schedules [...].

That statement is a bit surprising, sounds rather radical, but seems to fit well with many other comments made so far. So apparently, asking your employees how they are doing is evil, but at the same time it is fundamentally important to know what how they are doing. So if I understand you correctly, you are saying it suffices to monitor performance by some measures, possibly step in when performance is insufficient, and leave the rest to the employees. That sure sounds sensible. But while I am used to quantify processes occurring in nature, I do not find it very appealing to base human interaction on numbers and checklists. Just my gut feeling, though.

I have heard it said that, if you have the right staff, you just have to ask them to do something, then get out of their way.

It's a crass oversimplification of course, but it's not utterly devoid of reason.

That's certainly true. But I would like to focus on real-world in this thread, not on hypothetical ideals (unless you are seriously suggesting that a group leader feeling the need to ask their group how they are doing should fire them and hire new staff). Also, while this thread has had more emphasis on the leadership side (overall very interesting, keep it coming!) I'd like to point out that I am also very interested in real-world opinions about real-world situations from the employee perspective (thank you Tom and Tridimity for that).

[CharonY]

On the employee side (and again, academic setting), I work best when I am left alone as I am usually pretty good at identifying issues. I compile them and go to the boss to discuss them. It works for me better as I need to compile the issues in a streamlined way before I can discuss solutions efficiently. I have worked with a boss once who would walk into my office on a regular basis (or when he was bored) and ask for updates, which I would give him, but I never felt that in these interactions anything worthwhile was accomplished for the project. Instead the main purpose appears to be to provide the boss with positive feelings about progress.

To me, these were more disruptive than anything else.

If one has the need to keep in touch outside of meetings, coffee and lunch breaks tend to work (depending on group structure, obviously). If anyone brings something up it is a great pressure-free situation to discuss matters, if not, one could assume things are going well until the next meeting.

[timo]

In these situations [company setting] the most common strategy I have heard is to request updates or have project meetings rather than making the round. [...]if you need to keep tabs on things, a formalized setting (i.e. meeting) is better as it allows people to prepare themselves and individuals are not singled out. Creating good meetings (as opposed to massive time-destroying wormholes) is an art in itself, though.

That it is, indeed. I am not a great fan of meetings for several reasons. Especially meetings for discussing and deciding more technical points:

(1) Beyond 3-4 persons, effectiveness tends to massively drop. On top of that, there will usually be at least one person wondering why he/she even came to the meeting which turns out to be completely irrelevant for them. I do not think there is a magic trick to avoid this. Now, I am not sure if a meeting with 3 people is so far away from what effectively is a meeting of two people, which has not had much good press in this thread so far. Admittedly, some of your criticism like "someone singled out" is indeed fundamentally different between talking with one person and talking with two people at the same time. (Btw.: I had a meeting with two people today, and still half of the time the respectively other seemed rather absent).

(2) The amount of discussion a topic in practice seems to be quite unrelated to its importance. Large random fluctuations occur. The only true correlation is an over-proportional relation between the number of people who can say something about the topic and the length in which it is discussed. If you want your department meeting to end on time, do pray that no one mentions parking space, kitchen hygiene, or asks how often the cleaning staff should provide new toilet paper (all real-world examples, btw) .

(3) Meetings eat up an awful lot of time. Last week, according to my calendar I spent 20 hours in meetings. That's not counting the time to prepare for them or perform follow-up tasks (like scheduling the next meeting ). That's on the higher end of the spectrum of the group I sketched (I myself am not in the picture I drew, btw), but I feel that already four badly-scheduled hours a week have the potential to be a serious impact on productivity. Some tasks simply take a certain amount of undisturbed time (programming, writing texts, proof-reading, elaborate calculations, ...) and three mid-day meetings a week are already quite-likely to hit such a spot. That said, unannounced visits by the supervisor may be equally disruptive and less plan-able.

(4) Most people are very ineffective in meetings. People's minds tend to wander off, they tend to grab on single thoughts and put them into their personal context rather than the context of the discussion. As a result, some people stay quiet until explicitly asked for their opinion and discussions tend to wander off if they don't. The latter can in principle be offset by a competent discussion moderator (but of course, reality is a bitch in this respect, too). The former ... well, I had tried to offset it with the not-so-popular direct communication.

 

So much about meetings. Discussing this topic would probably warrant a thread by itself, so I'd say let's not go deeper into this topic. Unless, of course, you think they indeed constitute a relevant alternative to 1-on-1 discussions ("you" meaning every participant here, not only CharonY).

On the employee side [...] I compile [issues] and go to the boss to discuss them. It works for me better as I need to compile the issues in a streamlined way before I can discuss solutions efficiently. I have worked with a boss once who would walk into my office on a regular basis (or when he was bored) and ask for updates, which I would give him, but I never felt that in these interactions anything worthwhile was accomplished for the project. Instead the main purpose appears to be to provide the boss with positive feelings about progress. To me, these were more disruptive than anything else.

That quite well describes what I am currently thinking, including the "or when he was bored" and the main purpose being to "provide the boss with positive feelings about progress". I find such comments much more interesting than abstract ones that sound like they could be taken from a management guidebook, btw (I could just read such a book if I wanted that, after all).

[CharonY]

Actually I I would like to add some points with regards to meetings. To me it is not so much a matter of size, but rather one of organization. If you prefer 1-on-1 and you have the time to do so, go ahead, but I would give them a schedule as opposed to surprise meetings. That way the person can organize his/her thoughts/project/data and no one is singled out by chance or intent.

I agree that large meetings are useless, that is why I mentioned project meetings. To give a practical example: in one of my postdocs our group consisted of about 20 people, divided in about six projects. In addition, the topic of a meeting were deliberately limited so that no more than 3-4 people plus boss were involved in each. For instance the topic of a meeting could be finalization of a manuscript and only those involved in writing the draft (as opposed to the larger project group) would attend.

he large meetings were reserved to issues like need for lab=ware or other general interest issues and were generally kept to about 20 mins each Monday morning. The disadvantage was that the boss and certain key personnel still had a larger meeting load, but overall I found them more productive than huge big table meetings.