{"id":1989,"date":"2014-01-16T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T10:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2014-01-16T10:00:25","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T10:00:25","slug":"the-difference-between-a-good-boss-and-a-bad-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/the-difference-between-a-good-boss-and-a-bad-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"The Difference Between a Good Boss and a Bad Boss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have all had our share of bosses, managers, supervisors, and shift leaders.\u00a0 No matter what title or name they go by, they can be either exceptional or awful, and it all depends on what kind of boss they choose to be.\u00a0 Many have good intentions, but still come off as a terrible boss.\u00a0 Chances are you are a boss, or have a boss, and very well may supervise someone at some time in the course of your career.\u00a0 Do you think you are a good boss?\u00a0 If given the choice, do you think your previous or current staff would work for you again?<\/p>\n<p>Bosses are important.\u00a0 A good boss increases productivity, improves morale, and even reduces your risk of heart attack by lowering stress.\u00a0 These are all benefits that come from someone approaching their employees with the right mindset.\u00a0 If you approach a situation with the right mentality, you can have a profoundly positive impact on your staff and their work.\u00a0 If you go in with the wrong mindset, perhaps focusing on your own benefit and power, then you will only receive backlash and create a negative environment.<\/p>\n<p>What do good bosses do that bad ones don\u2019t?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Take Control \u2013 Whether it is your department, your processes, or your inbox, take control of it.\u00a0 You are the boss, make it your responsibility that it gets done correctly.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t delegate work (as you should), but you should still feel responsible for the quality of the work.<\/li>\n<li>Learn, Learn, Learn \u2013 Let\u2019s face it, sometimes managers aren\u2019t always the most knowledgeable people in the field they are managing.\u00a0 Perhaps they are great at project management with small teams, so they are placed in IT, but aren\u2019t all that experienced with computers.\u00a0 If this is you, strive to learn more about your field.\u00a0 Take courses, learn from your staff, and sit in on trainings.\u00a0 You should be the most knowledgeable person in the room, even if you have to work for it.<\/li>\n<li>Link, Sync, and Tink(er) \u2013 Part of being a boss is knowing who\u2019s who, what wheels to grease when you need something done, and who to go to when you have a problem.\u00a0 Make good connections with other managers from other departments, because you never know when you will need a favor.\u00a0 Keep your staff up to date on the issues in other departments like staff shortages or deadlines, so that they can plan accordingly.\u00a0 You may have to work the system a little to get people on your side, but that\u2019s part of the job.<\/li>\n<li>Be the First to Claim, Not to Blame \u2013 When someone comes in accusing your department or employees of poor quality work, obviously there are steps you should take to gather information and investigate.\u00a0 However you should take responsibility as the head of the department, and then deal with the issue internally, not say \u201cOh yeah that was Jimmy, he is a total screw up. He is in the back if you want to yell at him.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have all had our share of bosses, managers, supervisors, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[1152,1153,948],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}