New manager demands employee dress professionally or “go home” during an office Casual Friday—employee complies, goes home, still gets a full day's pay—HR sides with employee, and the whole team is mad at the manager

• 01
  
  via Andrej Lišakov
• 02

  Boss said "dress professionally or go home" so I went home

  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 03
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 04
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 05
  
  via Andrej Lišakov

• When you’re joining a new team as a manager, you really need to read the room. You aren't going to be able to swagger in full of bravado and turn the work group on its head in an instant. Your experience, strategies, and preferred process are important tools. But they can not be copy-pasted. Not only that, there is team morale and the team dynamic to worry about too.

  No two organizations are the same. Heck, even within the same organization, no two teams are the same. Even if you managed a team within the same industry, at the same level, there is going to be something that you overlook. So coming in ready to reshape every process and operation into your exact image is going to be a disaster. A blanket copy+paste of your processes and ideas, without understanding or context, is going to backfire every time. No matter what you think you know, there will be something in this new organization that you miss… I guarantee it. Be it something you overlooked, a process you thought was silly, or ignored technical advice. No matter what it is, at some point it is going to rear up and bite you.

  Again, read the room. If there is a tradition in your new team that you think is pointless or a process you think is silly, you need to pick and choose your battles. Are you really willing to trade the loyalty of your entire new team for this? And for what? Just to assert your own feelings on an issue and make everyone toe your new line?

  Plus, the intended message to your new team is loud and clear: You know better, and everyone else is just there. You rob your new team of their agency, their ownership of their work, and fail to acknowledge their wealth of knowledge and experience. In doing so, you fail to inspire their loyalty and faith in you as a leader and show that you think their experience and ideas are pointless.

  Allowing your team agency and ownership, showing your team that you trust them, turns into buy-in. Buy-in turns into efficiency and productivity. Whereas demanding that people do as you wish gives a feeling of being more in control in the short term, but it will lead to disaster in the long term. You might be “in charge,” but you’re not an absolute ruler with absolute authority. Your authority is, in fact, very much limited, as it turns out.

  Authoritative approaches lead to burnout and increase turnover, which are terribly inefficient. Those remaining will simply tell you what they know you want to hear, instead of giving the advice or insight that will lead to the best outcome.

  And, so, you will be fumbling through the dark with no bearing. Nothing will actually head in the direction you think it is heading, despite it appearing to do so from your perspective. And you'll eventually be left wondering why everything fell over on its head.

  So, even if your intentions are purely selfish or focused on the bottom line, whether it’s to satisfy your ego or lead to that next step on the ladder. It really just makes the most sense to wait, and watch, and learn.

  This new manager in this story made the classic blunder that so many new managers before have made. The call center where the team worked had an existing Casual Friday dress policy. The new manager came in ready to cause problems, immediately taking issue with the policy. The thing is, again, it was a call center, who was even going to see the way the staff was dressed? The entire "issue" pivoted on an ideal that the manager held, and that they alone held.

  But, although their issue was the policy itself, they found a target, someone to make an example of. Their scapegoat was this employee, who shared the viral story with this online community.

  The manager demanded that they either change their clothes or go home, like they were a inappropriately dressed high school student. This caused an issue with HR, who sided with the employee. It also caused their team to immediately dislike them as they proceeded to do away with the well-liked Casual Friday dress code policy.

• 06
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 07
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 08
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 09
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 10
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 11
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791
• 12
  
  via Natural_Bonus_6791

Tags