I was left at the end of that hour with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing as a manager except that I was expected to do it with what my mentor believed were a dishonest and disreputable workforce.

Many years ago when I was given my first management role I was given less than an hour’s preparation. That preparation consisted mainly of my mentor telling me how “They” would try to take advantage of me and all the different ways that “They” would try to do this.

I was left at the end of that hour with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing as a manager except that I was expected to do it with what my mentor believed were a dishonest and disreputable workforce whose behaviour was as close to criminal as it was possible to become without actually being charged with a crime.

Having worked with these people before as their peer I knew them to be loyal and honest but always disappointed with the way that management treated them.

Before ascending to the lofty heights of management I had always assumed that there was some overriding management reason that caused them to behave in the way they did that was too difficult for the average worker to understand.

On becoming a manager I was looking forward to finding out what the big secret was that prevented management from treating their workforce with respect, and was amazed to discover, no reason at all!

My mentor however was very careful to point out certain aspects of my behaviour that would not be appropriate in my new management position.

He thought that I was far too friendly with my staff and, now that I was a manager, that would have to stop. I would also have to use the parking spaces reserved for management around the front of the building. In future I was to use the porticoed front entrance (for managers), not the side, and I was expected to eat in the managers restaurant and not spend lunchtime chewing the fat with my staff over sandwiches and a coke.

Underlying this brief critique of my behaviour was the thinly disguised implication that if I could not behave as management expected then they were perfectly willing to admit they had made a mistake in promoting me and would look elsewhere for the right candidate.

I, like any other candidate, kow-towed to the model of behaviour demanded of me and found myself becoming less and less effective as a manager and increasingly removed from any understanding of the real issues that faced my staff. This was not because I had been promoted, the guys I worked with were genuinely pleased for me and were looking forward to having someone in a position of authority who understood enough about the system to be able to make their voices heard.

But my induction into management told me that any time I spent with my workforce was not “Management Time” and I found myself cut off from the people who had trusted me to represent them. This gave them the impression that I had sold out and that having achieved my promotion, no longer had any need to associate with the people who had helped me get there. That personally felt really bad.

I just knew that the behaviour I was forced to adopt in order to fit into their management mould was not going to allow me to be effective in that role.

I stuck it out for eighteen months but the more I tried to behave in a way that respected and supported my staff I found that the other managers increasingly criticised me for not behaving as a manager should. With this increasing criticism came the horrible realisation, there was no reason at all to behave in the way that most managers do, other than to conform to the status quo, and that was simply the way that managers think that they ought to behave because it is the way that they were told by their mentors that managers should behave. No practical reason at all.

Managing in this way was like watching someone doing performance tests on automobiles after first draining all of the oil from the engine, and coming to the conclusion that all car engines seize solid after twenty minutes at full throttle. Why? Because that is what always happens.

I remembered my first induction into the management club and the mysteries that I thought would be revealed. I discovered instead a system that perpetuated itself for no other reason than “This is the way we have always done it.”

We need to stop blaming our workforces for our problems and start looking instead at the behaviour of management that is perpetuating the destructive management system of Command and Control that has been irrelevant for more than sixty years.

Why, when every other aspect of human existence has progressed, are we still tied to the destructive management practices of a previous century.