12 Things Good Bosses Believe

This week’s Tuesday Reading “12 Things Good Bosses Believe”comes from Bob Sutton’s pen and appeared in the Harvard Business Review blogs.  Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.  He studies and writes about management, innovation, and the nitty-gritty of organizational life.  He is author of Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Part of Sutton’s research has sought evidence for what makes a boss great.  As part of this research he has identified some key beliefs that are held by the best bosses – and rejected or never thought about, by the worst bosses.  Here’s a sampling of the 12 he lists in the post:

1.  I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.

2.  Having an ambitious and well-defined goal is important, but it is useless to think about them much.  My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.

3.  Bad is stronger than good.  It’s more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

4.  Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk and not realizing it.

You will find the remaining eight in Sutton’s post along with URLs for additional information.

Do take the time to work through the entire list and see where you might sharpen how you are as a boss.

.  .  .  .     jim