“It is a business decision … the staff will understand …”

Here is one just for Managers and Supervisors (or anyone else)

A mentor of mine one time said, “we often forget what other people don’t know.”

Owner and executives are in the business, as it were, of making business decisions. They or you do it all day every day. Profit and Loss statements, Strategic Objectives, Enterprise Risk Analysis, Employee Relations. It is enough to keep the wisest and best of us up at night … and probably does.

Yet…

The warehouse staff, drivers, IT folks and receptionist may not know and I am certain that they don’t care — as much as you do or as much as you should — that you have to make decisions to keep the organization healthy or at least afloat. It is one of the joys of a leadership position.

It is also an unfortunate fact that the higher you go in any organization the more you know, the more you are held accountable for and the less that you can share with the others within the organization.

Some plans are not appropriate to share. Some information needs to remain confidential. That is the way it goes. Most bosses do what to share information and hope that employees will know and understand why reviews and raises are not given or appreciate the difficulty in coming to certain decisions.

However, an employee’s view is limited by their position in the company and most have zero access to business information and performance reports. Most employees do not know what you know. Consequently, they WOULD NOT LIKELY MAKE THE SAME DECISIONS that you would.

This can lead to feelings of resentment and frustration on both sides. It is not easy to be the decision maker. Expecting to have sympathy for the difficulty is a pipedream. It is not the employee’s job to fully understand the difficulty of management or ownership. It is the manager’s and owner’s responsibility to understand the impact of their decisions on the people and communicate that understanding when the news of the decision is delivered.