By Mark Grzeskowiak
Ask me whether or not I’m interested in being a manager, a supervisor, or a boss, and the answer is a resounding no! But I have good reasons, and apparently I’m not alone in my opinion.
Two surveys, one by the OfficeTeam and the other by the Insights and Ideas Group at Burson-Marsteller, show that the majority of North American employees share my point of view. The OfficeTeam survey was taken in 2005 to coincide with National Boss Day, and involved 972 employed professional men and women. It found that 71% of those surveyed weren’t interested in being the boss. The Burson-Marsteller survey asked executives in North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, and Latin America if they wanted to be the CEO, and found that on average, 54% of executives do not want “to sit in the corner office.”
The Burson-Marsteller survey also asked why. The main reason was a lack of work/life balance. The other reasons included too much stress and too much public scrutiny. Still, those surveyed admitted that they saw positive aspects, such as the chance to grapple with complex problems, have a real impact on the business, see their ideas implemented, and help their companies grow. Interestingly, the least important items on the “positives” list were what most people would assume were the main draws to the CEO’s office: “earn generous compensation,” “reach the pinnacle of my career,” and “serve in a prestigious position.” Money is something, but it isn’t everything!
I do enjoy work/life balance, but I’ve no problem with stress, because I avoid it whenever I can. I also don’t have a problem with public scrutiny. My main problem, for those who have read some of my earlier articles, is procrastination.
Signs of my disorder can be found all over my home. First, there’s the messy pile of correspondence and bills sitting on the table next to the bed. They’ve been opened, looked at, and put back into their envelopes. Then there are the two binders, precariously balanced on a stack of papers, which sit on the corner of the dining room table or on the floor right next to the table. The binders and the papers are work-related, and probably date back to 1998. Finally, there’s my special yellow folder, which contains all of the things that I need to file somewhere, but haven’t because: a) I haven’t had the time; b) I haven’t made the file folders up yet; and c) I’ve been distracted by a soccer game on television.
Eventually, my procrastination catches up with me, and what could have been a pleasant evening at home reading a novel is interrupted by the thunderous crash. One by one my neglected bills and papers fall down, and suddenly I’m surrounded by my own misfortune. It’s at this point that I usually take drastic measures, grabbing the nearest garbage can and beginning to file things properly. (This action is typically followed, a few weeks later, by a frantic search for a letter or bill that I can no longer seem to find.)
Similarly, as a boss, my business would collapse under the weight of my procrastination – unpaid bills, late orders, missed deadlines, delayed decisions. I’m sure there are managers, supervisors, and bosses who behave like this, but they’re the poor ones.
But I also see the positive side of being the boss – in particular, the faults that bosses get away with in the workplace. They can have absolutely no sense of humor, be terrible dressers, have bad breath, and be neurotic, paranoid, psychotic, homicidal, chauvinistic, unethical, dictatorial, etc., and people have to accept it.
And this brings me back to the surveys. Maybe the important question is not whether or not you want to be the boss – it’s whether you can actually do it. Sixty-three percent of those asked in the OfficeTeam survey said that they didn’t believe they could do a better job than their boss! Why make a career out of doing something that you’re poor at?
