The text gives a good deal of material on leadership and management. Should your boss ask you how to be a better leader and manager, what might you take from this material and suggest to him/her?
Ah! That is a really tough question. If this were to actually happen, I would worry about how honest I could actually be without losing my job. Hmm. If my previous manager had asked for my input...
Before offering constructive criticism, I would tell her what I appreciated, first. For instance, I always felt comfortable working with her. She was very easy to talk to, and I never felt that she was trying to intimidate me or was being condescending towards me. That was something that I had dealt with before from previous managers, so I didn't take for granted the fact that she was a down-to-earth type of individual.
After this, I would then broach on what troubled me the most - what I had to offer as a worker was being very underestimated, and by scheduling me such few hours, she denied me many opportunities to let her see that for herself. I loved the work that I did, and I was happy to do it; I hoped to have more responsibilities and challenges, but by the time my third year there had ended, it seemed obvious to me then that I was being overlooked. Being the type of worker that I am, a Theory Y managerial style works best with me. As far as I could see from the few times I actually did work with her, she seemed, anyway, to manage from that style, which leads me to believe that we would have had a good manager - employee relationship.
Sadly, as things turned out instead, I did not feel noticed, respected or valued, and in the end - at the start of my fourth year in the company - I was sick with severe insomnia [I was denied the twenty hours a week I needed in order to have the medical insurance I desperately needed in order to sleep at night]. This, unfortunately, led to my being late to work, which resulted in my being let go. I was told, quote, "I know you have insomnia; I understand" - with the sentences before and after this pertaining to my being separated from the company. Somehow, I don't think I was met with understanding at all.
Elton Mayo, after the psychological experiments he conducted at Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Chicago during the late 1920s - early 1930s, made a very interesting observation that I would like to end this essay with:
While working as a unit during the experimental period, the six employees developed a sense of belonging that was intrinsically more valuable than any of the additional perks enjoyed during that time. Even after the work group was disbanded, the workers maintained higher levels of productivity, in large part because of the increased attention they received from the experimenters.
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