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WHEN YOUR BOSS IS NONRESPONSIVE

During a discussion about goal-setting processes and the importance of having specific objectives, a manager complained about her immediate superior's failure to set goals and objectives for her (the complaining manager's) department. She further wondered out loud how she could get her manager to enumerate the expectations placed on her and to schedule periodic conferences at which they could review progress.

 

It would surely be the best of all working worlds if all bosses faithfully did everything this manager wished her superior would do. However, as the old saying holds: "The boss ain't always right-but the boss is always the boss." Managers who might be waiting for such direction could find themselves waiting a long time.

 

It is not productive to wait for one's superior to define goals and objectives for the department, and it may not be especially helpful to ask that this be done. The foregoing complaint suggests that the superior is failing to fulfill some responsibilities, and this may indeed be true. However, the subordinate manager has planning as well as operating responsibilities, and these planning responsibilities include the formulation of goals and objectives.

 

Take a close look at your job description. Decide what the structure of your job should be relative to what you know about the goals of the organization. Then, develop your own goals and objectives and recommend them to your manager. It is repeatedly proven that objectives are most often met when the person working toward them has had a strong hand in their development. "Ownership" of an objective, especially through authorship, is a strong motivating force for the eventual fulfillment of that objective.

 

In the ideal situation, a manager should expect a subordinate supervisor or manager to develop his or her own goals and objectives. If no such demands are made, you should consider doing so on your own. Objectives should always be reasonable-there should be a fairly good chance of reaching them; realistic-you are reasonably capable of accomplishing proposed goals in the indicated time frame; and controllable-you command the resources needed to fulfill the objective and are not bound by circumstances you cannot control. Ideally, every proposed objective should include a clear statement of what, how much, and when.

 

Having developed your proposed objectives, ask for your manager's help in refining them to ensure their consistency with the overall objectives of the organization. If need be, remind your manager, as diplomatically as possible, that you can do your best only if you know at all times where you are going and what is expected of you. Even if your manager fails to buy in to your objectives-or fails to respond to your request at all-you still have more than you had previously: you will at least know more clearly where you believe you should be going.

 

A regularly scheduled conference time with your manager would be of value in helping you stay on track. If such a time is not allotted, ask for it. You will probably be granted a regular meeting. However, if your requests-which should always be polite and respectful and never compromise your boss with other members of the management-are ignored or denied, you still have other options.

 

Communicate. Decide that you are going to keep your boss advised of matters whether this person seems to want the information. Do not simply take problems to the boss. Instead, adopt the practice of completed staff work: when a problem arises, do your homework, think it through, identify its likely cause, develop alternatives, recommend a solution, and ask for the boss' approval. A manager "cornered" with completed staff work will usually react to it by either accepting your solution or proposing another. An appropriate time for you to raise issues involving goal, objectives, and expectations is your annual performance appraisal interview. If at all possible, do not let you manager get away with a once-over-lightly "everything is okay" review. Ask directly what you can do to make yourself more valuable to the organization.

 

The keys to dealing with the manager's complaints mentioned in the opening paragraph are initiative and diplomacy: the initiative to bring problems and needs to your manager's attention, rather than waiting to be asked, and the diplomacy to approach the boss constructively, with minimal implied criticism of his or her management style (or apparent lack thereof).

 

Beyond thought of goals, objectives, and expectations, this issue of The Health Care Manager offers the following for the reader's consideration.

 

* "Health Care Communication Networks: Disseminating Employee Information for Hospital Security" recognizes that troublesome employees can move from hospital to hospital while hiding previous employment history and suggests how this problem may be addressed through trusted information sharing networks among hospital units.

 

* "The Differences in Keeping Both Men and Women Physicians Healthy" reports on a retrospective study to determine whether significant differences in health problems existed between sexes, based on information obtained from the files of physician health programs.

 

* "Everyone Wants to Help the Uninsured, But Who Will Pay the Bill? Why a National Lottery May Make Sense" suggests that there is growing support for a national health care plan but less support for new taxes to pay for such coverage and further proposes that financing could be secured through the proceeds of a national lottery.

 

* "What Future Health Care Providers Will Need to Know About Child Abuse and Neglect" reports on a study of examining the training needs of allied health students to become legally responsible, mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.

 

* "Creating a Winning Organizational Culture" offers a definition of a winning organizational culture and explores the idea that a winning culture can help every employee become a more productive individual and more effective in the delivery of health care to the community.

 

* "The Business of Academic Medicine Is a Business Like No Other: A Perspective" explores some of the critical differences between academic medicine and traditional businesses and identifies the forces, such as the pursuit of scholarly activities, that appear to drive the business of academic medicine.

 

* The Case in Health Care Management, "Just Enough to Squeak Through," addresses the problem a manager experiences with an employee who repeatedly improves substandard performance just long enough to get by before again reverting to unsatisfactory performance.

 

* "Human Experimentation: Historical Perspective of Breaches of Ethics in US Health Care" outlines the history of human medical experimentation in the United States and the ethical breaches often accompanying such experimentation and better prepares health care managers to understand ethical problems arising in health care delivery.

 

* "Three Components of Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction of Hospital Nurses in Iran" reports on a study undertaken to investigate the level of organizational commitment and job satisfaction of hospital nurses in Iran and the interrelationship of the essential components of commitment and job satisfaction.