Some comments based on High Stewart’s review of a book subtitled “Understanding and avoiding employees leaving, thieving and deceiving”. In Management Today, Henry Stewart reviewed Furnham & Taylor’s book “The Dark Side of Behaviour at Work”. Its an interesting reinforcement of the relevance of McGregor’s Theory XY model which I referred to in my blog article here….
Having stated that since at his company,
“It is a core principle to believe the best of all our people.”
he didn’t expect to enjoy the book, and basically he didn’t although it wasn’t as awful as he expected. Stewart adds that the turn to the dark side is usually provoked, which I suggest is also a natural result of Theory X management style.
He leaves us with two snippets. Firstly, that most (64%) staff who resign do so to leave their manager. This is based on survey data, but it is also interesting that having read this first in Stewart’s review last August, I have come across it several times since. His second pearl of wisdom is to understand that people managers should be good at it. This may seem obvious but most managers are chosen for their core skills and organisational planning, not for their people management skills.
ooOOOoo
Originally posted on my Sun/Oracle blog and republished here in Feb 2016. There were minor edits.