At lunch the other day, we were talking about our last supervisor, Jim Corby, who left the company last year. Three years earlier, he had been hired to work as a member of a team of circuit board assemblers. After a short time on the job, he showed his technical competence with an initiative that helped members of other teams as well as his team's performance. He did small favors for his teammates and kept on the best of terms with Jane Tallaferro, the team supervisor at that time. He usually kept his complaints to himself before unloading on his best friend. Jim was quick to agree with Jane, his supervisor -- sometimes too quick. At the meetings of the team before starting a new assignment, he stayed out of controversies, was careful in what he said, seldom disagreed with majority opinion, and generally made a good impression.
When Jane was transferred, Jim was given the position even though he had less seniority than some of the others considered for the job. Some people thought It was due to his technical competence; others said it was because he was always trying to butter up the managers at our monthly meetings with them.
Jim thought he was a pretty good supervisor. He was a fairly likeable guy, but for one reason or another, we had found him hard to trust. We tried to figure out why. We decided that although he appeared to do the right things, often he was deceiving both himself and us. For instance, he talked a lot about the moral thing to do, yet he insisted on doing whatever it took to keep the director happy, including brushing over mistakes. Jim would act like we had just received an emergency request, and get us all hot and bothered to stop everything else to handle the matter, when in fact the request was actually a routine one. When he said that he would set us an example by working after hours, he actually seldom stayed late.
He often was flattering for trivialities when he thought he was praising someone for an important, well-done job. He was quick to make promises that we learned he couldn't keep. He took our failures personally as if we intentionally didn't try hard enough so he would get "mud on his face." He talked about getting a bonus for all of us, but only three of us got bonuses and he got one himself that was twice as much as ours.
He asked to be trusted and told us a lot of what we liked to hear. Only after he left did we find out that some of what he had said was misleading. He talked a lot about empowering and delegating, but in fact kept us on a tight leash whenever something that had to be done was important.
When we were trying to reorganize for a new mission, his suggestions were stimulating, but his arguments were oversimplified, based on false assumptions and half-truths. What his superiors may have said was more important to him than reason. Although he appeared sympathetic when we approached him with problems at work or home, his behavior indicated a lack of concern (withdrawing, changing the subject, not listening, etc.). Instead of being supportive, he was ingratiating and quick to turn the meeting into a discussion of his problems.
It had taken us a while to truly figure Jim out and, probably luckily for all concerned, by then he was gone.