THERE IS A HELL! - - - IT IS CALLED RETAIL LIFE SUCKS – LIFE IS NOT FAIR GET OVER IT | Page 4

LIFE SUCKS – LIFE IS NOT FAIR
GET OVER IT
When you promise something to an employee, they take it as a done deal. For example, if
you promise a promotion to a staff member at the completion of a project, he/she will be
expecting a promotion at project end. If you can’t deliver, then at best, you have lost
credibility, at worst; the employee will be on his way to Human Resources or his/her lawyer
to complain.
As another example, if you tell a staff member that if he/she works through the weekend
then he/she can go to an up-coming user conference, then don’t let him/her go. Not only will
you lose personal credibility, but you will never get the person to work another weekend.
By making promises you can’t keep, I don’t mean to imply that you are purposely lying to
your staff. I mean that you should carefully consider your ability to keep your side of the
bargain. That said, if you continually fail to follow through on your promises, even if it truly is
with the best intentions, you will eventually be viewed as either a liar or ineffective.
Early in my career, I made this mistake. As a young and new project manager, I told a
member of my staff, that if he worked on a Saturday/Sunday to finish a specific project, I
would give him two days off during the next week to make up for working Saturday and
Sunday. He worked on Saturday and Sunday and did a great job. That Monday, I had a
meeting with my boss and told him the project was done because he had come in over the
weekend. I then said I told him he could have another two days off during the week to make
up for his weekend efforts. My boss then said giving time off during business hours for time
spent during non-business hours was against company policy.
I felt terrible for telling him he could have a two days off and my boss was upset with me for
not checking the company rules before offering this arrangement. My boss then told me to
go talk to him and who had been at the company much longer than I, said he knew the
policy and thought it was odd that I made the offer and figured the two days off would never
happen anyway.
The moral of this story is that even though I tried to do the right thing, my lack of knowledge
of company policy and inexperience as a manager caused me to make a promise I couldn’t
keep. I was fortunate that my boss just considered it to be a learning moment for a new
manager and the hard worker, thankfully was forgiving of my error, but it could have been
much worse. Also, as a young manager, I learned an important management lesson. Before
making a promise to a staff member, be positive you can follow up on your promise.
Know that this issue doesn’t just happen to new managers. I was a lso on the other side of
this issue as the employee and my boss was a VP level executive. There was an
organizational change coming and my boss promised me that I would be receiving additional
responsibility. When the organizational change materialized, the size of my boss’s team was
cut in half. As a result, I ended up with less, rather than more responsibility.
My boss had no idea that the organizational change would affect him in this way. He thought
he was going to get more responsibility, not less. He felt personally betrayed by his manager
over the change and even worse for not being able to follow through on promises he made
to me and his other managers. He eventually left the company.
dodie ste®eo p®odu©tion ™

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