How to Be a Good Boss (Or At Least Not a Horrible One)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Peggy

I have been thinking a lot recently about what separates good bosses and bad bosses. There are two recent events that I believe are responsible for this being top-of-mind for me right now. First, my company was acquired and everywhere I go people are experiencing acquisition pangs. Second, a dear and influential executive from my work sphere recently passed away. The combination of these two events has me thinking about when I have most enjoyed and when I have most disliked my work.  Without exception, the difference between which end of that spectrum I was on was all about my boss.

I certainly was more energized, more productive, took more calculated risks, was more creative, was more cheerful, was a better team player, etc., when I had a good boss.  The bad bosses, frankly, sucked the creativity and energy right out of me. I know that some of this is just a matter of personality fit. But I have had good bosses with whom I really didn’t want to hang out, but for whom I had great respect.  So, compatibility aside, I’m convinced that there are some fundamental qualities that describe good bosses and when those qualities are missing, the result is a bad boss.

  • Choose the right people.  I have learned much from managers with the talent of spotting talent. Key to doing this well is understanding your own abilities and choosing people who complement and augment your strengths. Too often managers surround themselves with people just like them and end up with the equivalent of a team full of carpenters with only hammers in their tool kit. A good manager picks talented people with a variety of skills, resulting in a team of people with all the tools required to do the work. The mechanics of how to pick great people is a meaty one, so I will just boil it down to the essentials 1) look for the right fit, attitude, and aptitude remembering that it is possible to train for technical skills, but improbable that you can retrain attitude and aptitude; and 2) do your homework. Interview candidates. Have your team do some interviewing. Check references. Use your team as recruiters, giving lots of weight to the opinions of your most valued employees. And if the person you’re considering works for your current company, talk to their teammates, their manager, and anyone else whose opinion you value.
  • Set direction. Strong leaders figure out where the team should be going and communicate a strong vision to the team so that everyone is moving in the same direction. Figure out how your team adds value, what they need to accomplish, how they can make a difference. This direction needs to be something that each person in your organization can hold up as the test for what is important to do and what is not. If your team doesn’t know who they are and where they are going, you are not being a leader. If the direction isn’t one that inspires, makes people think of possibilities, fosters creativity, then you are not being a leader. You get extra good boss points if you have your team of excellent people help you figure out what this direction should be. (Note: “Avoid getting laid off” is not an inspiring vision.  Neither is “Just do what I say.”)
  • Remove roadblocks. Your people have challenges and frustrations that they aren’t equipped to solve alone. Find out what is holding them back and driving them nuts. Then fix them. Here’s an example: I was given a team of senior technical support engineers supporting a product that had just shipped a release with serious quality issues. This poor team had a new boss, a terribly buggy product, long hold times, angry customers, and half their team on the road doing a training tour. Most of that situation I couldn’t fix, at least not immediately. But I asked them what wasn’t working. I kept asking them about all the things that were broken and all the frustrations they had, and it wasn’t long before I had a meaningful list of things that I could work on in their behalf. I found out that one of the biggest pain points was a long line of customers with serious technical issues that required a repair performed by a development engineer. The trouble was that the development engineers were taking 2+ weeks to pick up each customer issue, and these were customer’s production systems – and the customers couldn’t wait that long for fixes. It took months of negotiating, me refusing to take “no” for an answer, and the support of a great boss of my own, but I was finally able to get the repair tool given to my team so that they could fix these problems themselves. That tool has been a pivotal part of troubleshooting that product ever since. The key here is that I asked them what was keeping them from getting the work done. I listened. And then I did my part to address what I could.
  • Get out of their way. I am convinced that this is where most bosses trip up. Perhaps the tendency to micromanage stems from the propensity to reward great individual contributors by promoting them to be managers. As managers, these great individual contributors often keep doing what they did that made them so successful in their old jobs – work hard, do everything themselves, make every decision, and in short, become truly horrible bosses. My advice here is to get really comfortable with the reality that you can’t lead a team while you try to do their jobs for them. If you are convinced that you can’t take a vacation or a sick day because the office can’t possibly function without you, you are a bad boss. If you make tactical decisions without consulting your team, you are a bad boss. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that if you make ANY tactical decisions, you’re a bad boss. So, step back. Take a deep breath. Carefully consider the wonderful team of people that you have pulled together to do the work. And let them do the work. Give them the responsibility to get the work done and hold them accountable for the results. Give them the visibility and recognition appropriate for their accomplishments. And trust that as their boss, you get to share the glory for their wins. You’ll get the reflected dishonor, too, if they mess up, so stay in touch and guide and advise. But let them lead the way, do the work, and get the visibility, all the way across the finish line. And yes, this may mean letting THEM be the ones to present the proposal to the big wigs. Show your team that you trust them and respect their expertise and they will amaze you with their results.

And that’s it folks! Just get good people, point them in the right direction, remove barriers for them, and get out of their way. If you aren’t sure how well you’re doing these things, consider asking your team. If you’re a good boss with a relationship of trust with your team, they’ll tell you what you’re doing well and where you can improve. If you’re a bad boss, well, they’ll probably lie and say you do everything perfectly.

So then just ask me. I’ll give it to you straight :)

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Loving Your Man

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Peggy

(Photo by GJ LaBonty – My Guy and I on our wedding day)

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m going to share my deep thoughts on loving your man. First off, I think that women generally know how to do this during the falling-in-love and honeymoon stages of a relationship. But for some reason, we often get sloppy or lazy and stop demonstrating our love in a way that feels like love to our man.  And isn’t love really about how you make the other person feel? So, put aside the hearts, chocolate, flowers and jewelry expectations of the commercialized Valentine’s Day for a moment and give some thought to how you can really show your man that you love him:

  • Be his girlfriend – Remember how you used to primp and try hard to look your best for him? You probably met him at the door with a warm greeting and a hug and kiss. Maybe you held his hand in the car and asked him about his day or his opinion on a subject dear to his heart. Channel that old girlfriend attitude and treat your man like the hot date that he once was. Tell him with your every action that he’s desirable, interesting, and manly. My husband regularly tells me how much he appreciates that I sound happy to hear from him when he calls me and happy to see him when he walks in the door. What a small thing to do to show him that I love him!
  • Be his biggest fan – Hollywood has done us all a real disservice in modern sitcoms, making the man in every relationship a weak, passive-aggressive whiner with marginal intelligence. Don’t take your cue from television’s couples – no healthy red-blooded male wants his mommy as his lover. Instead of criticizing and harping on what he doesn’t do, be his partner, on his side, cheering him on. There’s a reason that little boys love super heroes – the male of our species seems programmed to want to slay dragons and save the day. So, let him know all the ways that he is your hero and tell him how much you appreciate the many figurative dragons he slays every day. Does he go to work every day to provide for his family? Does he make sure the oil is changed and the tires rotated on your vehicle? Does he reach the stuff on the top shelf for you? Open the pickle jar for you? Show your sons how to be a man and teach your daughters how to have a positive relationship with a man? Chances are he really is your hero. Show him and tell him.
  • Be interesting - What’s the best way to be interesting? Be interested! Invest in you. Figure out who you are, what you like, and how you add value. For some reason, it’s easy for mothers in particular to become absorbed in their children’s lives and stop having a life of their own. The trouble there is that your kids are developing lives of their own and will become more and more independent – where does that leave the mom who has given up her own identity for her children? And in the meantime, you may have also left your partner with only the mother of your children, rather than with a partner of his own. Any man worth his salt wants his partner to be happy – he’s not asking you to give up everything that made you interesting to him in order to be his maid and mother his children! Too often, women make that choice all on their own. So take it back, girls! Be someone interesting to you and you’ll likely be interesting to him as well.

The key to any of the above working for you and your man is sincerity.  If you don’t feel it, you’re going to have trouble showing it. So, dig deep and find the love and then SHOW the love! (And if chocolate helps you do that, be my guest.)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there!

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Having it All

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Peggy

You can have it all.

I’m serious! Stay with me now, and I’ll explain.

You CAN have it all.  You just can’t have it all at the same time.

Some of the “all” that we want can’t coexist – for instance, have you ever seen someone possessing both youth and great wisdom at the same time? (Just take a mental inventory of the teenage pop stars of our culture if you have any doubt on this one.) Another example is money and discretionary time – when most people have money to spend, they have a job and other responsibilities tying them down and these make it hard to go play on a whim. Relaxing time and money tend to be at odds – we rarely possess them both at the same moment.

Me, I can’t seem to have both the dishes and the laundry done at the same time.

I remember driving home from work when I was about 30 years old, thinking about the many things I wanted to do and experience, and how few of them I felt I could manage at this point. I wanted to cultivate great friendships, nurture a career that would bring financial security, be a stay-home mom and travel the world. I couldn’t see the way that I could do even two of these things at the same time, and that is when it hit me. I couldn’t. No one could. But maybe, if I was both patient and consistent with my priorities, maybe I could achieve the important things in my life when the time was right.

In other words, I could enjoy the great blessings in my life each in their own season.

At that moment I vowed to relax and stop worrying about what I wasn’t able to do right then. Instead, I would live in the now and have faith that, at the right time, I would experience the important things that life had to offer me.

So, I don’t really care that the laundry and dishes are never all done at the same time. And I have faith that someday the rest of my dreams and wishes will come true. I think nostalgically about the wonderful parts of being a college freshman, of having young children, and of being a new employee, on fire to make a difference. I look forward to the joys of being a grandparent, of having more leisure time, and of spending more time pursuing my interests and talents. And I work hard to remember to enjoy the now – having the experience and perspective to know which things are worth getting fired up about (even if I don’t always remember not to get wound up anyway), seeing our children entering young adulthood and achieving their independence, having one last child at home to nurture and love, and getting regular glimpses of the joys of the empty nest.

Here’s wishing that each of us gets to “have it all!”

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Ugly Ornaments

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Peggy


We put up our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving so that we could decorate it while my daughter was home from college. I say “we” very loosely. My son helped me bring up the tree box and all the decorations, and my husband helped assemble the tree sections. But it was a committee of one spreading all of the little branches and getting our brand new fake tree ready for decorations.

In Christmases past, I could count on two small children dancing all around in a frenzy to decorate the tree while I wrestled with the lights. Decorating the tree with teenagers, however, is a completely different business. After rescheduling twice to accommodate the social butterfly’s many appointments, I finally cajoled them both into the front room to decorate the tree.  The fight over whose turn it was to hang the star was the shortest it’s ever been – in fact, it seemed to be an argument just for tradition’s sake since neither of them actually cared who got the honor. Once upon a time, it was a life-and-death debate to hang the star on the tree.

We took the usual walk down memory lane as we hung each of the keepsake, homemade, and gifted ornaments we have. This year, however, there was a regular chorus of “this ornament is UGLY. Can’t we just throw it away?” Throw it away? To whom do they think they are talking? Don’t they know me at all? If my sweet babies made an ornament, it is going on that tree for as long as I have breath in my body. The macaroni can fall off, the construction paper can shred, but that ornament is going on the tree. And as for the ornaments that I made with my own, young, prepubescent hands (I am so sorry to say that word to you. Sort of.)…well, those ornaments are getting hung on that tree. End of discussion.

In years past, I could say “oh, just hang it in the back where no one can see.” This time, though, there were ornaments my kids deemed too hideous to even hang on the back of the tree. I eventually bowed to pressure and let them throw out a few of them. I stood my ground on the two ornaments that I hand-painted when I was 11.  I don’t care if they are homely. They are from my past, and it’s a past that I am happy to dwell on and celebrate. Those two ugly ornaments are hanging on my tree! Waaaaay at the back.  Down at the bottom. Where no one will ever notice them.

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The Day After

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Peggy

I hope that Thanksgiving day found you in the company of people you love and enjoying good company and good food. I love Thanksgiving Day – it revolves around family and friends and doesn’t involve any gift shopping. That’s my kind of celebration.

Yesterday, we were fortunate enough to be able to spend time with my husband’s family early in the day, and then eat dinner at my brother’s house. As I was preparing some side dishes yesterday morning, enjoying the sunrise and listening to Christmas music, I got to thinking about the various ways I’ve spent Thanksgiving in years when I haven’t been so fortunate.  Now, I have been blessed in this life – I’ve always had a home, enough food to eat, and my basic needs met. I haven’t always been as lucky as I was this year, though, with so many loved ones near.

One example was my first Thanksgiving away from home. I was 17 years old and away at college, 900 miles from home with no hope of traveling back to be with my parents and younger siblings for the holiday. My oldest brother finagled my roommate and I an invite to Thanksgiving dinner with his in-laws in Idaho. We found a ride on the rideboard (Ever used that? What an adventure!) and drove 3 hours to spend the holiday with my sister-in-law’s family. We were so grateful for their hospitality and had a very nice time, but I’m not sure I’d ever been so homesick before. Since I could hardly wait to get far away from my family to go to school, it was a wake-up call that I missed them so much at Thanksgiving.

And then there was the year I spent Thanksgiving in Paradise. I spent part of my sophomore year of college at BYU-Hawaii in Oahu. It was a fabulous experience, but now I was even further away from my California home. Most of my friends were going on a school-sponsored trip to Maui for the holiday, but I was short of funds and stuck at the nearly empty dorm with just a couple of other girls. We decided that eating in the dorm cafeteria for Thanksgiving dinner would be too depressing, so we pooled our money, picked up a car at Rent-A-Heap, and drove to Honolulu for the day. We ate turkey and the trimmings at the most expensive hotel we could afford (read: low-budget). It felt strange to be walking around in shorts and flip-flops and hearing Christmas music while gazing at palm trees. I was possibly even more homesick than the previous year. 

The toughest holiday of all, however, was the Thanksgiving Day immediately following my divorce. My children were spending the holiday from school with their dad, and it was to be the first holiday that we would spend apart. I knew it would be a big milestone and tough for all of us. As luck would have it, my extended family were all spending the day with their in-laws or had other plans. I was foolish enough to pass up an invite to dinner with my pal Carrie, thinking that I would feel out of place. I opted, instead, to spend the day alone, at home, eating a TV dinner. Mistake! I was sad and lonely and missing my kids so badly I could hardly stand it. This experience was a stark reminder that family and friends are what matter most in this uncertain world.

I’m thankful for all the blessings of love and friendship in my life, and I’m grateful to you, for reading to the end and supporting me in my writing hobby. Thank you!

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Peggy

It’s a week into November, and in my adopted state of Utah, the temperature today was in the low 30′s Farenheit. Brrrr!

There are some strange things that happen to me when the weather turns cold and the nights get long. I want to wear fleece around the clock. I crave warm, fattening, comfort food. I can’t drink enough hot drinks. My only wish is to curl up under a blanket and watch movies, read books and eat soup all day.  So, in honor of all that I love about winter, here’s some of my favorite cold weather things:

  • Stephens Pumpkin Spice hot drink mix – Oh my.  If you like pumpkin pie, you will LOVE this drink.  My daughter’s friend took one sip and said “it tastes like liquid happiness!”
  • Microfleece – This is a magical fabric. It’s soft. It’s warm. It comes in every color imaginable. It takes great amounts of will power for me to wear anything else these days.
  • Flannel sheets -What a great invention!  Seriously, who thought of flannel sheets? Whoever they are, I salute them.
  • Football - I only sort of care about football at this point of my life. I hardly pay any attention to who is playing and how the teams are doing. And yet, the years of attending every football game for my school mean that I will always associate football with happy memories of colder weather.  I remember cheering in the rain at high school football games, and shivering in the stands in the snow in college. This year I was lucky enough to go to my daughter’s university’s homecoming football game. It was absolutely perfect autumn football weather, our team kicked some butt, and I even caught a toy football from the cheerleaders. (Don’t laugh! It was a one-handed catch from the upper deck. I rocked it!)

There’s plenty to love about colder weather, especially since I’m blessed with warm clothes, a heated home, indoor plumbing, and heated water. Getting to snuggle with my sweetheart is a bonus! Here’s to enjoying this season.

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Sad Halloween

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Peggy

I’m in a new phase of parenting, which really feels like a completely new phase of life. My eldest child is away at college, and my youngest child is nearly 16 years old and a sophomore in high school. The difference in having just one teenage child at home was especially apparent as Halloween approached this year.

Sample conversations with my son as Halloween approached:

Me:  “Let’s go get some pumpkins and carve jack-o-lanterns tonight!”

Buddy:  “Nah…I don’t feel like it.”

And:

Me:  “Let’s go to a haunted house!  I think I can handle it.”

Buddy:  “Nah.  And mom, you KNOW you can’t handle it.”

I despaired at doing anything remotely spooky and fun with him for Halloween, and so took matters into my own hands and bought tickets to a dinner theater at Gardner Village’s Witchpalooza event without consulting Mr. Party Pooper. To say he was less than enthusiastic about going would be a huge understatement. It turned out to be a very funny show, however, and he and I had a ball. We also watched several scary movies the week before Halloween, which is always fun.

And that, folks, was it.

Now, maybe for most people this would be no big deal, or maybe even a relief.  But we had a rich family tradition of BIG Halloween celebrations. For years I gave a large children’s Halloween party for my kids and family and friends. I spent weeks finding creepy crafts and scary food items for this shin-dig. We put hours into selecting and putting together the perfect Halloween costumes. I always dressed up and wore my costume to work.  We carved pumpkins and decorated with skeletons, spiders, and Marcus the Carcass (our favorite outdoor decoration – a lighted ghoul who appeared half-buried in the yard). Some years we even made a spook alley in our garage. In short, Halloween was a big deal, celebrated fully and completely.

Now, not so much.

We put up no decorations. We carved no pumpkins. We wore no Halloween costumes.  And Halloween evening was the sad ending to this pathetic non-celebrating.

Buddy was scheduled to spend Halloween night at his dad’s house, and my husband was out of town on a hunting trip.  This left me alone on Halloween night.  I made my traditional Halloween dinner of beef stew and cornbread, turned on my porch light, and waited for the trick-or-treaters.  And waited.  And waited some more.

My doorbell rang once, and I handed out candy to 3 cute young girls.  In retrospect, I really could have given those three a LOT more candy, since no one else showed up. Now, our house is a little bit isolated from the surrounding neighborhoods, so it isn’t a complete shock that we don’t get much trick-or-treat traffic.  It is still really, really depressing.

Next year, I need to go with Plan B.  I’m open to suggestions!

 

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Catching Up

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Peggy

I took a little blogging hiatus, and the problem with taking a break is that it’s so hard to figure out how to start back up. Much better to keep the momentum going and not take a break in the first place! Anyway, here I am, determined to get back in the groove of sharing my exciting and action-packed life with all my eager readers (haha).

A little bit of catch up is in order:

My son played Conrad Birdie in his school’s production of “Bye, Bye Birdie” and he was completely adorable. You know what made this proud mama the proudest? Watching my son belt out his solos and strut around like Elvis with complete abandon. He really hung it out there, which is something that can be especially hard for junior high-age kids.  It was a little freaky to have young children in the audience come up and ask for his autograph afterwards.

Thankfully, Conrad never does get the girl kissed in the play, so I wasn’t subjected to watching my 15-year-old son kiss a girl on stage. (Ewww!) And let me just add that the amount of time it took him to tame his curls into a pompadour was ridiculous. No boy should ever have that much time spent on his hair. Really. He’s also decided that he needs a leather jacket now. Hmmm…

Here’s My Buddy with the girl who played Kim MacAfee.  She’s a cutie isn’t she?  I still didn’t want to watch my son kiss her.  Call me crazy.

In June, my daughter crossed the finish line of her high school career. We had a blended parent graduation party for her, which was a feat in and of itself. We held the party at a local park (neutral territory) and began praying for good weather. The party was in the early evening on June 3, and June is the time of beautiful weather, right? Not this year, folks. The wind started up in the early afternoon and the temperature dropped steadily, and by the time the party started there was an arctic howl blowing through the park.  The kids wrapped in blankets and we tried to anchor down all the food to keep it from blowing away. After the second full 2-liter bottle of soda blew off the table and exploded on the cement, we decided to call it quits. We took the party back to our house, the kids disappeared upstairs to play games and the adults collapsed and tried to get some feeling back in their frozen hands. It was quite a whirlwind, but the kids had a marvelous time and the parents all survived being at the same place at the same time; It was an all-around success.

Here’s my Little Firecracker with her long-time friend Megan. I love Megan’s smile.  It’s so beautiful and genuine.

They’re cold, but don’t they all look happy and ready to tackle the real world?

The kids played a strange game called “Swedish Twister.”  I don’t know how this game works, but it was pretty entertaining to watch.

The next day, the main event occurred and my little girl walked across the stage. The most noteworthy part of the whole event for me was that I managed to NOT cry. This is a miracle.

She’s all grown up.

 …and so ready for the next stage of her life!

My sweet kids on this important milestone day.

Both of them unable to miss a chance to ham it up.

We have just this one final summer together before my daughter heads off to college. Things will never be the same again.

But, somehow, that’s ok.

 

 

 

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The Humiliation Chronicles

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Peggy

I think the powers that be are committed to keeping me humble. When one is so often publicly embarrassed, how can one think otherwise? The good news is that a regular stream of humiliating experiences means that I have stories to tell.  Boy, do I ever have stories to tell!

  • On Sunday, I was leading the singing at church (and no, I really don’t know much about music.  Honestly, every week I wonder why on earth I’m standing up there waving my arms like I know what I’m doing). Anyway, I started leading a hymn and almost right away realized that I was off beat. Chagrined, I paused a beat to get back on track, but something just didn’t feel right. The congregation was singing with me at first, but pretty soon they seemed to be singing something else entirely. Then the organist starting playing a little interlude that I couldn’t find anywhere in my music. I kept waving my arm like I knew what I was doing, but I was completely bewildered. I looked over at the organist and mouthed “I’m lost!” and she smiled and shrugged and kept on playing. What with singing and waving my arm around trying to keep the beat, I was having no luck figuring out where we were in the song. About half-way through the 3rd verse, someone behind me on the stand said “she’s playing #192.” I was leading #191. Oops. These songs had different words, different melodies, and were different lengths. No wonder I was lost! Out of the 200+ people there that day, I had to be the last person to figure out what song the organist was playing. Nothing like being the last person in the room to catch on…All I can do is laugh at how crazy and confused I must have looked up there.
  • Today I gave a training (is that proper English? Can you “give” a “training”? And what about end quotes before a question mark.  Is that ever correct? These are the things I wonder late at night).  Anyway, here I was, standing in front of 30 people at work with my laptop projected on a big screen.  And, you know exactly what happened, don’t you? I had closed all my instant messaging apps BEFORE the training, because I didn’t want anyone to send me a message that would be projected to the audience.  But, apparently I didn’t EXIT the app (duh) because my husband’s next message to me, which contained a four letter synonym for manure, was projected to the whole group.  I, of course, was facing the audience and was, again, the last one to know that this had happened.  Curses!
  • And there is the unfortunate Fortune Cookie episode.
  • And the eyebrow debacle.
  • The list goes on and on…

Thanks for laughing WITH me.  That’s what you’re doing, right?  Right?

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A Friday List

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Peggy

In no particular order, here is what is rattling around in my brain today:

  • Today is my brother Russ’ birthday. He is the sibling just older than me, and the closest in age to me. We’re the two standing in the back in this picture. My little brother Mike is at the bottom, being all cute when clearly this picture was supposed to be about scowling and looking tough. Geez! Russ and I had some epic fights and sibling rivalry, but we also played together every day. Happy birthday, big brother! I think you should have us over for some of your amazing BBQ to celebrate. Isn’t that how birthday celebrations are supposed to work?
  • Today is Friday the 13th. This makes me want to eat popcorn and watch scary movies. But then, that’s pretty much what I want to do every Friday night.
  • I’m pale and freckly and too old to want to damage my skin by tanning. Therefore, I embrace the modern wonder of self-tanners. I have a love/hate relationship with self-tanners, however, because I loathe the way they make my skin smell. I read somewhere about a new line of self-tanners that use cocoa as a key ingredient and don’t have that gross smell, so I hunted it down and it arrived in the mail today.  I put a tiny bit on and I smell like chocolate!  It’s divine! I’ll give a full report on how well it works later.
  • The sun is out and it finally feels like spring! Spring this year seemed to be even more capricious than usual for Utah, so I am excited to have it finally feel real. Of course, this also means that the weeds that are my yard are going gangbusters which will make my neighbors all hate me. Sigh.

Here’s to the start of the weekend.  Enjoy!

Peg

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