By Russ Newton
The story I
am going to tell today is about how I dealt with a bully as a boss over my
career. But I think this lesson works well in your personal life as well.
This
happened in 2005. I was director of operations at California Community News. I
worked for the SVP of Operations, Mark Kurtich. One day, we had a big mistake
made by one of our truck drivers. He delivered a small community newspaper two
hours late to a DC in Orange
County where the Los
Angeles Times was also delivered from. The two hour delay led to the LAT being
two hours late because the same carriers delivered both papers. The team at CCN
investigated the situation and we issued a Last and Final warning to the driver
for the poor decision that he had made that led to the two hour late delivery.
(he had gotten lost and didn't call for help) That is the background to the
bullying that happened next.
I received
a phone call from Mark Kurtich about the incident. I started to explain what
had happened and what we had done but before I could finish, Mark interrupted
and started to get angry. He started yelling at me, saying how unacceptable
this was and how bad it made him look as SVP. The yelling continued, I could
not get a word in. So I hung up the phone. About five minutes passed, he called
back. Asked what happened. I said we must have been disconnected. He started
talking and again started yelling. I hung up a second time. This time it took
ten minutes for him to call back. He said what is going on? I said, Mark, you
can discipline me, fire me, affect my pay, my bonus, stock options or
promotional opportunities. But you can't yell at me. Okay? Is that fair? He
agreed and the call ended. And for the next two years I worked for him, no
bullying happened again.
At the
time, I was worried I would lose my job. But I can't stand being bullied,
particularly by being yelled at. My father was a big yeller and I learned the
correct lesson at an early age, Yelling doesn't work. The first time I was
bullied as an adult by someone other than my father was when I was a press
operator at the Army Times in Springfield
VA. In 1984 I was running the
front page color lead on the product we were printing. I had a red plate out of
register six rows of dots (about a 1/4"). We shut the press down for
replate and the supervisor said "No plate moves, we are behind and we just
put the replate on and go" He told me to "split the difference"
(Which means there is two separate newspapers being printed at one time, so I
was put both papers 3 rows of dots out. I was a bit of a perfectionist at this
time. So this is when I made my first mistake. I knew I could move the red
plate in the same number of press moves it would take the other operator to
replate. So I disobeyed my supervisor and moved the red plate. When the press
started up, the second mistake I made was obvious! I had moved it the wrong
way! So the supervisor angrily shut the press down and we moved the plate the
correct way. I came out from the unit mentally kicking myself. I should have
followed his direction, i was a moron and I would never do that kind of thing
again. But then the supervisor approached me and procedure to yell and scream
at me for what felt like five minutes. And during that yelling, I stopped
thinking about how I screwed up and started to think I don't know when, I don't
know how but I am going to get even with you prick! All thoughts of my error
where gone and I was on a revenge mission. I did get even with him many years
later, more on that in the future. When I became a supervisor, one of the
things I vowed I wouldn't ever do was yell at someone. It doesn't
work.Explaining what the person has done wrong and seeking corrective steps to
fix the problem in a calm and reasonable manner works a heck of lot better than
yelling at the individual does.
Visit Russ' web-page by clicking here
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