Corporate Psychologist

I'm not a psychologist. I am a manager for human resources who specializes in organization development. Currently, I've also been serving as an employee relations resource and at times I find myself cast as the shrink for managers.

Maybe this is because staff-level or frontline managers would hesitate to approach someone senior or ranking over them, I don't know. I do find myself having a managerial clientele. Most of the time, their issues concern that of other managers, specifically their own boss.

Not that this should be groundbreaking news, since most employee dissatisfaction is directed against the immediate or overall superior in the organization. I often wonder how big a difference it would make if the person venting my way would actually hold a conversation with her boss.

I mean, I'm a manager myself and I would find it immensely preferrable if my staff would rather communicate any issue or complaint (especially about me) to myself rather than to anyone else. I may be over-estimating my ability to understand or sympathize here, but what could I possibly do to them for honestly communicating dissatisfaction?

The fear is quite irrational actually. Particularly in my organization, I have yet to encounter a case wherein summary judgement and punishment was levied against an employee giving negative feedback to her boss in private. When did this ever happen? And since it has never happened, there's nothing in the past that leads to conditioning the employees to fear the boss.

Perhaps there are managers who actually prefer to employ fear as a means to govern her unit. There are, after all, managers who relate to their role as responsible for minimizing problems and controlling errors/variance in the quality of work.

Nothing wrong with that. I however, find that minimizing problems is an uninspiring goal. It's boring. I actually create problems. Yes, I intentionally create problems. Since I am intentional and responsible for the creation of these issues (particularly in their contextualization as problems to be solved), I actually specify the particulars - the what, when, where's and hows.

What's my point? I choose the problems that are worth my time.

I then enroll others in generating the solutions. What kinds of problems are worth our time? Creating growth and development in the long term in the face of near-constant changes and fluctuations in the organization and its processes - that's really inspiring for me. Also is creating and developing new leaders and giving them the reins to steer the organization in directions that can both surprise and inspire all its members

These are problems because they do not exist in the present, and that we want them to exist. I want them to exist. Now I have a problem.

In the face of these goals, my other problems disappear! Not like they don't exist in time, space and form; only that they cease to cause the disempowering symptoms of problems: negativity, resignation, complaining, resistance, frustration and the like.

Perhaps if I were an authentic psychologist, I'd be able to counsel these employees to behave in the manner that I described. Well, I wouldn't worry about it. That's not a problem that really concerns me. There are other ways of being, and I'm still going to listen.