Is that really necessary?

How do you respond to a Supervisor who is constantly shouting at and embarrassing you in public whenever they are giving instructions or even reprimanding you? We have studied and heard the the different styles of management/leadership but one thing that is constant is the fact that no one style of leadership/management fits all circumstances. Different situations calls for different responses and that’s why we are currently hearing a lot about emotional intelligence. When you are put in authority over someone, you must be in a position to read the situation each time and respond accordingly. This brings me to the point I’d like to write about today: shouting at/dressing down your junior staff in public just because you can. Well, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again that dressing down your junior staff or embarrassing them in the presence of their colleagues just because you can get away with it doesn’t make you more powerful. When an employee makes a mistake, do you call them on the side to resolve the matter or would you rather prefer that the entire office hears about it? When you are the kind that prefers to make it a public affair, what you are doing to these employees is killing their self confidence while proving to them how incompetent you actually are. As adults, we respond to shouting or public embarrassment differently. Some will zone out and probably starting thinking about what they’ll be preparing for dinner, while there are those who’ll run into the washroom and cry their eyeballs out. Then of course there are those who prefer to meet fire with fire. As a leader or manager, your power does not come from how loud you can get but your ability to influence the people you are working with to buy into the direction you wish to go with them. Whenever you find yourself constantly reminding your juniors who the boss is, you are probably not the boss, or atleast they don’t see you that way. Publicly embarrassing your staff will not only make them loose trust in you but also the respect and a manager that is not respected by his/her juniors is not a manager. HRPs will tell you this, if the Boss always shouts at the HR in public, the HR automatically looses the power to reprimand even the most junior of the staff. That’s because in essence, what the Boss is communicating to the rest of the team is, ‘your HR is brainless and retarded!’. When we are put in authority, it is important that we treat people with dignity and respect. And when I speak about authority, I’m speaking about all levels of authority. Your success as a leader, manager or supervisor depends entirely on the people under your authority. Earn their respect and demand the same from them!