Managing People in Workplace

Reflection from the article “What a Star – What a jerk” while people like Andy Zimmerman will always happen in a workplace. Someone who is talented, lots of energy and smart, however his attitude does not suit with the internal condition of company and it’s become burden for manager to cope with it. He tends to be the top of other employees with his inappropriate behavior and always bully his bottom line. So, what is the role of manager?

Furthermore, it starts with hiring someone new in a company. Managing people and training them are costly. According to Robert I Sutton-the author of the weird rules of creativity, hiring people who make you uncomfortable, even those you don’t like, is another way to increase the variety and creativity in what people think, say and do. Unfortunately, it does not include inappropriate behavior that can ruin the organizational objective. Should we ignore them? That big question for manager and some researcher in personality psychology suggest that people with certain traits are best able to avoid, ignore, or reject them. I disagree with this statement that will kill the character of person, the role of manager as a supervisor will be questionable and it’s against the weird rules of creativity.

As a manager, it’s their job to develop a high-performing team even Andy was somebody that has bad behavior. According to Kathy Jordan, a psychologist that manager need to have ability to manage relationship with colleagues professionally, and to coach team members on developing assertiveness and conflict management strategies. In consequence, workplace is not a kindergarten that everyone can act inappropriate way, employee is an adult that understand how to behave in a workplace. I agree that managing people need patient and it takes a lot of time to build trustworthy among them and create conducive workplace.

This reflection made me think that being a professional manager will always face with the situation that need strong emotional control to survive with the condition and professionalism in doing their job. They need plan and can inspired intrinsic motivation of their bottom line and to build synergy between them.

Sources:
Cliffe Sarah (2001). What a Star – What a Jerk. HBR Case Study 37-48

Sutton, Robert I (2001). The Weird Rules of Creativity. Harvard Business Review 94-103