Tag: #covid

Remote Workers Being Laid Off For Not Typing Enough?

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By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

Since the pandemic employers and leaders have had to make the adjustment to having their teams operating remotely.  After over two years of suffering through the pandemic this adjustment is starting to feel par for the course now.  However, since the pandemic and more so recently I have heard several colleagues and friends have told me about being laid off or fired and the reason employers have given them was they had a low keystroke on their work computer?  Which sounded a little weird to me given that many of my colleagues and I have a lot of data both qualitative and quantitative data to review including legal docs day in and day out.  Which means that the typing quantity would of course be lower.  In working remote for over ten years now ( and no that’s not an exaggeration I am proud that I have gotten to work remote for so long prior to and preferably post COVID).

This got stranger because another one of my colleagues who was laid off for this key stroke analysis reason stated that a lot of the communications for work were being done via online systems like email, teams, skype for business and similar. However, this colleague noted that often this person would use these programs from via phone.  Others also noted that with coffee shops, and outdoor seating becoming more inviting as the weather got better, they would log in from their laptops in other locations to help themselves get out and about.  This method of being able to be mobile in remote work for those who are not accustomed to remote work this is helpful for promoting mental health and work and life balance. 

An example I can give personally I have had several trainings that I have led via Zoom from the comfort of my backyard as an effort to get outside a bit as a stress reliever.  Another personal example is walking around the house to make a snack and a cup of tea while using the text to speak function on my phone to answer emails or using my wireless headset to answer questions for team members via teams. The only comments in ten years for doing this has been, “I love how quickly you were able to help me with this”, and “Wow the weather is nice there”. 

So, colleagues contacting me saying that while they had been doing the same thing are getting backlash through their performance analytics based on keystrokes was strange and prompted me to do some additional research.  In my research on this led me down a rabbit hole of how companies are inappropriately using data analytics in remote work settings. There are a few practical research articles from business professionals in leadership talking about how to use data analytics to measure productivity and performance.   

In those articles there are several remote employee surveillance systems like EfficientLab, and even using team communications apps like Slack and Teams.  There is a really great scholarly article found online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268120301542 and referenced below a number of different data analytics to monitor or spy on employees who are working remotely. 

Based on how these productivity analysis methods are being used there is some additional steps when anglicizing productivity that leaders need to do in a remote work environment.  For starters leaders need to learn what each employee does.  That seems condescending but, it is true.  Leadership needs to practice a concept in six sigma called cross training.  Within a cross training requires all employees including leadership to learn what each employee does and works to learn each other’s duties.  This also allows employers to invest in training all employees as we all navigate the Great Resignation. 

Once a leader knows what each employee does the monitoring used needs to include a qualitative and a quantitative methodology.  Using a more informed understanding of what employees do and a proper method of evaluating productivity.  It will also help strengthen labor pools instead of diminishing them. 

References

West, D. M. (2022, March 9). How employers use technology to Surveil employees. Brookings. Retrieved April 5, 2022, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/01/05/how-employers-use-technology-to-surveil-employees/

Galanti, T., Guidetti, G., Mazzei, E., Zappalà, S., & Toscano, F. (2021). Work from home during the COVID-19 Outbreak. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 63(7). https://doi.org/10.1097/jom.0000000000002236

Miele, F., & Tirabeni, L. (2020). Digital Technologies and Power Dynamics in the organization: A conceptual review of remote working and wearable technologies at work. Sociology Compass, 14(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12795

Jensen, N., Lyons, E., Chebelyon, E., Bras, R. L., & Gomes, C. (2020). Conspicuous monitoring and remote work. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 176, 489–511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.05.010

MICRO-MANAGEMENT IS AUTHENTIC BULLYING

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By: Stephanie Diana Wilson- Eubank

Micromanagement is a method of leadership which based on my research of remote work and my own work experience is a hostile and lazy form of leadership.  It is lazy because rather than leading with the understanding your greatest resources a company has is its employees.  Hostile because micromanagement has been shown to not only create room for management bullying but to cause harm to employees emotionally. Remote work becoming more normative since COVID has allowed for more transparency of how authentic leadership as a term being corrupted by controlling leaders who are insecure, and incompetent to shine through. Leading remote teams is more emotional work on the part of leadership but, it is good and necessary work.  Before I detailed the facts of how micromanagement is beyond harmful to employees onsite and remote there are some concepts of remote workers as a focus need to be detailed first.

Such as there is a great article pre COVID found on, https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068 on how to manage remote workplaces.  In said article the author Cascio details how remote workers suffer from three types of isolation.

  • Social,
  • Professional, and
  • Geographical.

Due to these types of isolations managers of remote workers and teams need to work on calling or reaching out to subordinates.  Not just for status on projects or assignments.  Rather to reach out to employees and just say, “hi”. There is an interesting TED Talk, (Durrwachter, 2020); regarding the power of saying, “How are you doing?” and “ hello my friend”.  As leaders we need to bother to talk to our employees!  To ask, how are you?  We all have been traumatized globally by the pandemic.  Many of us are still living in the trauma.   The surprising thing is candid, open, and reasonable conversations spark and genuine leadership and communication arises.  Which is the true intention of authentic leadership.  Not the excuse to be a tyrant and a bully that the term has come to be synonymous with. 

However, there are articles like, (Milne, 2021); detailing how there is now spy ware for managers to investigate employee’s cameras and see them and monitor them.  Showing linkage with these programs with communication software like Slack where the user can watch a team and chastise them if they are not at their computer at the exact moment management is checking on them.   There is ample evidence on how micromanagement hurts the work force and can hurt a company’s work force.  Such as the article from Forbes, (Kurter, 2021); and the article from Psychology Today, (Golden, 2020); on how micromanagement hurts businesses.

Micromanagement is not only detrimental to a company and its employees but, it is a testament to lazy management.  How is it lazy management?  For one as noted in remote workplaces there is additional work that must be put into cultivating a team.  Micromanagement is a leaders’ scream that they as leaders did not hire people that they trust to get the job done.  When employees don’t feel like management trusts them it is unnerving.  Micromanagement just shows a leader who isn’t willing to adapt and get to know their team and how best to support them.  At the end of the day remote or onsite employees are a company’s best resource and need to be treated as such. 

If this article helped shed some light on how micromanagement is not in the best interest of a workforce especially not remote please share.

Work Cited

Cascio, W. F. (2000). Managing a virtual workplace. Academy of Management Perspectives, 14(3), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068

https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068

Durrwachter, D. (2020, October 1). Authentic leadership. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/dianna_durrwachter_authentic_leadership.

Milne, S. (2021, September 5). Bosses turn to ‘Tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/05/covid-coronavirus-work-home-office-surveillance.

Kurter, H. L. (2021, July 1). Is micromanaging a form of bullying? here are 3 things you should know. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2021/06/29/is-micromanaging-a-form-of-bullying-here-are-3-things-you-should-know/?sh=45a23efa4467.

Golden, G. (2020, October 30). 8 micromanaging boss traits that endanger your business. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/curating-your-life/202010/8-micromanaging-boss-traits-endanger-your-business.

Why Isn’t Remote Work Being Pushed as An Infrastructure Recovery Initiatives Post COVID-19?

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By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

Not to get too political, but there is so much political discussion right now on how to recover nationally from the economic devastation of Covid-19.  This debate is being held politically by those who are not businesspeople or people who have advanced academic experience in economics and business.  As shown in the article from Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/01/08/the-college-profile-of-the-new-members-in-the-117th-congress/?sh=12f8eb233b10 of the newly elected many have advanced degrees not all are in business, and a majority of the degrees are in law, a few MBA’s, Theology and, geology.  There are also several representatives with certificates or never finished an undergrad or associate degree. 

So, as a businessperson, who has the advanced academic degrees and is working on my dissertation for my Doctorate in Business Administration I would like to weigh in on how my focus topic of remote work could be a helpful method to help our country recover economically from Covid-19.  Since remote work has so many benefits to the economy and the workforce in general this article will just focus on women and caregiving.  I will make a whole series of articles on each benefit to a governmental push for more remote work as infrastructure. 

If more benefits were given to businesses to push for employees to work remotely long term for the foreseeable future this would help business, the economy, diversity, women, issues of child and family care, and additional financial assistance to the work force as a whole.   All the way around remote work helps workers balance their lives and career goals.  One thing I am looking forward to as a remote worker is as my state opens up getting to take breaks and taking a walk to have a cup of coffee and brunch at my favorite mom and pop shops with my friends when they take their breaks.  Which still allows me time to come home finish the bulk of my work and welcome my kids back home from school.  Once I put my boys to bed, I can work on my homework and get to bed and start the day again. 

I have had this ability to balance my work, school and, family luckily for the past seven years.  Oh, and trust me I understand that I have been fortunate to have the ability to work remote and continue to work remote.  Honestly, I don’t know how I would have been able to provide and care for my boys regardless of their disabilities if I was not lucky enough to have the opportunity to work remotely.  

However, I do understand based on experience over the past seven years and now as the country is opening back up (even though there is concern of another wave of COVID and its variants) management pushes back against remote work.  (This is mostly because remote work causes managers to have to develop empathy and lead authentically not using the term as an excuse to emotionally abuse employees by being a jerk.  See my previous article on that topic.) Yet, if government makes a push to help both large and small companies push for remote work where it can be done it may be the push needed to really recover.  

The statistics are compelling on how remote can help our economy.  Especially for women.  First off in the US the concept of a full-time mom is not normative anymore due to economical constraints.  Speaking from example of being both the child growing up in a dule income home and being the mother of a dual income home, it is few and far between that families can afford to be a one income household. Even though my life, family, and my husband’s work are here in Silicon Valley California.  Which also happens to be one of the most expensive places in the country to live.  It also doesn’t help that traffic is so bad here as well but, that’s a different article to write.  There is little ability to have a single income family to have the bandwidth to be a full-time mom not just here but nationally.  The Population Reference Bureau as seen in the article, https://www.prb.org/resources/traditional-families-account-for-only-7-percent-of-u-s-households/ found in 2003 only 7% of American’s we able to live in a one income household with children. Where dual income with children at the time was 16% of the US and dual income without children was at 13%.  The other 64% were single parents and single people.  And according to The Hill article https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/543941-americas-single-parent-families 30% of American Families are single parents usually moms with a child under 18.  Of that 30% of single parent families 75% are single moms.  The article goes on to break down the socio-economical statistics of single moms but, it points out the face 51% of the single parents in the US are fellow minorities.  Specifically, Hispanic, and African American families are the most effected.  Single moms tend to also make less and have less work opportunities regardless of education, experience, and skills (again a soap box for a different day).  What is heart breaking single moms are 34% more likely to be impoverished.  

The article also mentions that 57% of American’s scapegoat single parents, single moms especially and comment on them working too much and not being enough for their kids or not working hard enough.  (again another soap box as I have been a single mom, a working mom, and a student mom all at the same time and remote helped me do it all and teach my boys hard work ethic and how it pays off.  In an area that to be middle class for a family of three the income required is $150k for a single income so we were poor for our area.  I also like to think it taught my boys that I love them so much that I work tirelessly to make sure they have every advantage I can possibly provide.)

Women are also statistically the main demographic as a caregiver for family members who are disabled or elderly.  Which largely is unpaid!  According to the statistics on the Family Caregiver Alliance https://www.caregiver.org/resource/caregiver-statistics-demographics/ their data was collected by AARP and found 34.2 Million Americans provide unpaid care as of 2015,  16.6% are adults caring for disabled children and 34.2 Million of these caregivers are caring for someone 50+ years of age again unpaid.  I have had several friends who while caring for family members who were ill or disabled would not have been able to care for them on their own if they didn’t work from home.  Of those friends fortunately they worked from home, so their family members did not die alone.  These friends were both men and women with varying ethnicities and socio-economical backgrounds.  Though per the same article AARP found that 75% of unpaid caregivers are women.

There is also the remote team pitfall of many companies pre- Covid-19 would create what are called “dream teams” which are teams made up of experts in their field.  This is done without regard for team design of personalities or on how well each person works together in a cohesive team.  

This design flaw can be used to the advantage of women in the economy.  Per the PEWs research https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ women make up a little over 50% of the college educated work force and 46% of the over all workforce is women with higher education.  Also, the PEWs research showed that of all the undergraduate degrees earned in the US 57% were awarded to women.  This means the push for advantages of remote work would bring highly educated women opportunities to balance the caregiving role that societally tends to be thrust onto women more than men.

The benefits of the government viewing remote work as an infrastructure cause will help the economy and work force from the bottom up.   With the focus just on the women of the US work force an increase of remote work would allow for more women to keep themselves and their children out of poverty just from the view point of caregiving and childcare restrictions physically and financially on women and families. It would also create more opportunities for educated women to shine in the workplace.  

Remote work as infrastructure cannot be understated.  Yes, working and caring for others is HARD work!  However, one thing Covid-19 taught America is we are not afraid of a little hard work and when given the opportunity to work remote life and work continued. 

Watch Your Tone: Considering the audience when virtually communicating with remote employees

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By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

Tone in emails and other written platforms such as Skype, Slack, or Teams can be a tricky thing.  Where onsite employees may be able to understand or be able to ask in the background with management to see if an aggressive tone was intentional or not.  Remote teams have a harder time identifying if harsh tones in writing if it may be intentional or not from management.

There are concepts for remote workers called social isolation and professional isolation.  To break it down:

  • Social Isolation: we often forget business is a social activity and social science.  And socializing at work is a big part of working in business.  Believe it or not water cooler talks and social interaction with coworkers is a draw to onsite work and can be good for mental health.  Also, this sort of social 
  • Professional isolation: is where the employee doesn’t get a lot of collaboration time with management or other interactions with management.

There are also concepts that remote workers have as stress causing aspects of working remote.  Such as statistically speaking remote people are often the first people to be laid off during mass layoffs.  This is statistically common because remote people don’t get to interact with management or coworkers due to social and professional isolation.   This isolation also may lead to missed opportunities for remote workers.

Now, now these concepts have been known to be issues for remote teams.  However, since COVID-19 with everyone who can work remote.  With Remote work becoming mainstream this means management must adapt to these pitfalls because it now affects them too.  There is also the fact that with COVID-19 new pitfalls arise.  Such as the dreaded kids interruption if they are not back to in person schooling, the state being on fire and evacuations being needed (like here in California), cats jumping on the desk, dogs barking, or my personal annoyance is cars with too much base shaking the whole neighborhood. 

Although there are added benefits for all when working from home that need to be accounted for and embraced. Such as taking breaks when one is supposed to and using them to go outside or other mental health/ self-care need.  There is also flexibility to manage a work/ life balance.   However, none of this positive move for the economy to healthy business practices until better communication practices are realized and common place.

One big step many managers need to work on to realize the best remote environments and most productive ones is the skills within electronic communication.  

Here are a few tips for management and communicating with teams effectively in this new remote environment:

  • First ask each team member what their preferred method of communication is.  I know it seems easy enough, but some people may like the constant teams or skype typed quick notes and others might get an anxiety attack from that.  And then there are those who rather just have a quick phone call. 
  • Make both one on one time with team for status and business but also just to ask, “how are you doing”.  Showing a little empathy goes a long way towards building strong trust and employee retention.  It also helps prevent professional isolation making employees feel more like people and less like numbers. 
  • Take time to just have a nice virtual lunch together with your whole team and staff.  Bonding regularly with a team helps everyone not only keep work focus but, reminds us all that we are people.
  • Managers need to encourage their team to communicate with each other not just about work but just to take 10 minutes to talk about the weather.  Business being a social science needs to be emphasized socially and understood some people like remote for the lack of social interaction. 
  • Managers when emailing need to watch for tone in emails so that no one feels provoked.  Firmness can still be conveyed but, there are tricks for making the tone calmer:
    • Use We instead of me or I.  This unifies the team and company as one and comes off less combative.
    • Note in the written communication that all work around options were considered but, don’t note that they can escalate the issue. That comes off as a challenge. 
    • Write clinically.  Not putting too much emotion into the writing.  It shows neutrality so there is no favoritism or anger to be derived from an email.  
    • While writing do open with a friendly salutation and at thank everyone for their help with the info.  Again, show a united front.
    • Before getting to the heart of the issue write something positive. 
    • Clearly define changes showing rather than pointing fingers we are moving forward with lessons learned.  Be sure to also state what the sought results are.  Goals need to be clear. 
    • Close these emails by asking if you can help or clarify or answer any questions.  Make sure that you make sure to note you are available and welcome questions.  Also, that everyone has your contact info. 
  • Never send emails when angry!  That’s how you end up in HR because you have made a hostile work environment. 
  • Draft your emails in word.  It helps make sure that everything is spelled and grammatically correct showing your professionalism.  It also helps if writing when angry to re-read your work and edit, and edit, and edit till the result works.  Also, this stops the accidental email that wasn’t polished yet. 

These tips should help learn how to communicate with remote teams and help with comfort of though remote can make us far away we are still on the same team.  

If you liked this article remember sharing is caring. 

Why Go Backwards? : An article on missed opportunities of remote learning.

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By: Stephanie Diana Wilson-Eubank

First I want to go on the record as going through dysfunction of COVID in the form of balancing work and being the stay at home parent now delegated to being the in-home teacher.   I am blessed to have changed jobs to a position that allows more of a dynamic role that is flexibility to balance my family and career goals remotely.  Further I am blessed that this company values my goals towards my Doctorate degree in Business Administration.  And I needed to be able to work to provide for my family like most Americans.

All this said I have to say I have preferred my kids going to school remotely and how we have been safe.  Honestly it has been easier for my boys especially when dealing with their disabilities.  Such as we get to do more positive morning activities together before school starts with no traveling, last minute wardrobe changes, no dealing with the school giving my son milk when he is lactose intolerant.  

Not to mention other parents I am friends with who have disabled children and those who are minorities are pushing to wait to send their kids back to school when as a nation we have reached closer to heard immunity and 80% and up vaccination rates nationally.  Many schools are pushing to open ASAP when we are nationally only at 10% vaccination rates.  

Which, is a bit hasty in my personal opinion, however, my mother sent me an article from the local KTVU news at https://www.ktvu.com/news/california-law-does-not-allow-for-virtual-learning-waiver-expires-at-end-of-june , (Fernandez, 2021); which speaks to laws about remote learning and push back rather than embracing the practice.  Also, that the state is not budgeting for remote learning.  Which, is not just short cited from the fact current attitudes nationally about COVID make the variants a real potential threat to go back to lockdown just as we got COVID-19 to some semblance of under control.  However, to stay in my lane of business and the economy as those are the focuses of my doctoral program and the topic of remote work being my thesis focus I was inspired to focus on who school is being set up for an out dated economic thinking and needs to be changed.

Specifically what I am referencing is the topic of what is academically referred to as “Factory Model Schools”.  Here is a list of articles on the topic:

In lay terms the setup of public schools is formatted to familiarize students to a work life within a factory. Which, makes no economic logic since based on the monthly article put out by the US Department of Labor and Statistics at https://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/04/art2full.pdf, (URQUHART, 1984); the US has been shifting out of an economy comprised primarily factory workforce to a service industry since 1984.  With this in mind we need to redevelop the public school system to do two things.  

One prepare those not on a university level life long quest to be competitive in the work scape that is now our economy.  To do this online learning and hybrid learning need to become normalized.  Not normalizing and making remote or hybrid learning a quintessential part of the educational formatting is a missed opportunity.  This especially needs to become fundamental in the education process in California where we are the epicenter of the tech sector and the home of the tech Meca being Silicon Valley.  Think about it one of the main issues noted in my dissertation on remote employment has been push back of companies and management.  Even though remote employment not only saves the bottom line and adds to the diversity and organizational structure of a company there is still push back.  What I hear most from management personally working remote for over seven years say things like, “remote work is difficult to manage”, and “I have always had face to face interaction and remote is just so foreign”.   However, teaching kids to normalize remote work allows learning needed skills in project management (nothing prepares you for business like knowing how to organize people remotely), social networking, technology, data collection and data integrity, along with remote customer service skills among a myriad of other skills.  

The second task of schools is to set children who want to go on the academic journey of college and advanced degrees and research to prepare those students and that involves remote learning as this is a normative practice in college level education.  (Also, do not think I am saying any one or group shouldn’t go to college.  College is not for everyone and I believe that academic advancement is a life path not a make shift destination.  It is a journey.  With that said it should be a different paper to pick apart reformatting colleges.   With a remote paradigm there should be a reformation to make junior/ community and state college have more programs available for people to get careers that is logical for our current economy not an economy almost forty years go.  Trade schools are needed but targeted towards understanding engineering tasks and robotics. I firmly believe education is a key for success and not sharing all the forms of education is wrong and economically damaging).  This all said many programs for college prep leave out a lot of kids.  The groups who are especially vulnerable to this are the economically disadvantaged kids and those who are disabled.  There is a level of questioning in public schools about inclusion.  To that I say to remember that diversity matters and remote work and school place allows platform for these sorts of kids to flourish.  Same with the kids trying hard to fit in remote schooling gives an opening for success on their own developmental terms.

There is another economic opportunity that being over looked by schools not pushing for remote and hybrid learning and instead fixating on a status quo.  If students who are special needs can get paraprofessionals or one on one aide from the school to come to the home and help this would be a game changer.  This solution which allows for the government creation of more jobs to stimulate the economy while investing in education.   Per research on Salary.com and Indeed.com the average aide makes in California between $25k and $35k per year.  It is not a high paying job but, it would still be job stimulation.  Also, these jobs come with training and tend to only require a two year college degree or a specific amount of Early Childhood Education units of study.  

Not to mention how teachers can benefit from a remote or hybrid class model.  Teachers can afford to live where they want and maximize their spending.  Also, with less facility expenses more materials can be purchased and doled out to students for use towards education.  Making it so students in lower income families can afford to keep up with the academic Jones if you will.  

There are so many upsides to implementing remote and hybrid school models to benefit all parties and encourage economic growth on the front and back end.  It makes the article from KTVU that inspired me to write on this blog post aligning with my own academic research seem that the government is being short sighted.  We need to plan to make a healthier and more creative economy.  This planning starts with pushing back on old outdated design models that were meant for an economy that disappeared almost forty years ago rather than everyone trying so hard to go back to our previous so called, “normal” school and work life.  Normal keeps our economy idolizing of days long gone of people working in factories and making American strong goods.  The shift has happened and we need to embrace the idea of people working at home, in the library, local Starbucks or where ever they like creating Strong American services and technology.  This is the idealism that will empower our economy and it starts with the restructuring of the educational system to give all students an even upward mobility into a more productive economy.

Work Cited

Fernandez, L. (2021, March 12). California law does not allow for virtual learning, waiver expires at end of June. KTVU FOX 2. https://www.ktvu.com/news/california-law-does-not-allow-for-virtual-learning-waiver-expires-at-end-of-june. 

Strauss, V. (2019, April 18). American schools are modeled after factories and treat students like widgets. Right? Wrong. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/10/10/american-schools-are-modeled-after-factories-and-treat-students-like-widgets-right-wrong/. 

Shaw, A. (2016, August 22). Factory Model vs 21st Century Model of Education. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/factory-model-vs-21st-century-education-anne-shaw. 

Serafini, F. W. (2002). DISMANTLING THE FACTORY MODEL OF ASSESSMENT. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 18(1), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/105735602753386342 

Found online at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247498643_Dismantling_the_factory_model_of_assessment

Carl, J. (2009). Industrialization and Public Education: Social Cohesion and Social Stratification. International Handbook of Comparative Education, 503–518. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_32 

Accessed online at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_32

URQUHART, M. I. C. H. A. E. (1984, April). The employment shift to services : where did it come from? US Department of Labor and Statistics . https://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/04/art2full.pdf. 

MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW April 1984 9 Employment Shift to Services

Indeed.com. Home. Paraprofessional Salary in California. https://www.indeed.com/career/paraprofessional/salaries/CA. 

Teacher Aide Salary in California. Salary.com. https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/teacher-aide-salary/ca. 

Is it Authentic Leadership or an Excuse?

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By: Stephanie Diana Wilson- Eubank

There is a movement in trends of leadership called authentic leadership and in both on site and in remote workplaces authentic leadership as a skill is being perverted as an excuse for poor people skills and aggressive management behavior.  First let us define what authentic leadership is.  In layman’s terms it is a leader who is honest to all and is just genuinely themselves.  Not seeking approval from others so that the goals are the focus.

First off how is authentic leadership defined in professional capacity versus layman terms?  Forbes has a great article titled “What is Authentic Leadership” that you can check out for further clarification.  The link for that is, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/amp/  However, to sum up the article an authentic leader is someone who is able to be themselves and are results driven with a brand of personal honesty.  If interested there is also a great Harvard Business Review article, https://hbr.org/amp/2005/12/managing-authenticity-the-paradox-of-great-leadership for more info on authentic leadership. 

Now this article is not to disparage different learning or performance types.  Everyone has a type of manager they work best with, but this article is specifically for those in leadership roles who act badly to their employees and argue they are using authentic leadership tactics.  This article is to bring the topic of abusive managers.  Where my focus topic of my research is regarding remote employees these sorts of bad players also do more emotional harm for remote employees.  Forbes also has a great article on what is detailed as professional isolation which is a normative pitfall for remote employees as they don’t get to interact with management face to face as often.  Which can put remote people at a disadvantage at the start.  Which means managers must do a little more collaboration to help ease that issue so that it does not create a constant revolving door of hiring.  You can check out the Forbes article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurelfarrer/2019/02/15/beware-professional-isolation-is-more-than-loneliness/?sh=17a736712723. 

First off how is authentic leadership defined?  Forbes has a great article titled “What is Authentic Leadership” that you can check out for further clarification.  The link for that is, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/amp/  However, to sum up the article an authentic leader is someone who is able to be themselves and are results driven with a brand of personal honesty.  If interested there is also a great Harvard Business Review article, https://hbr.org/amp/2005/12/managing-authenticity-the-paradox-of-great-leadership for more info on authentic leadership. 

Many of us have had the boss like the meme from the office with the power object watch and the coffee mug saying, “Yeaaaaaa, I am going to need to you do this project in less time than we agreed”.  Or the manager that when you ask a legitimate question says, “you got to be f***ing kidding me” and starts to berate an employee for a simple question.   Or the manager who always says exactly what they are thinking with no filters.  My personal favorite has been a manager who throws items off desks and screams at people to get his way and HR explains away his behavior because he is a high producer and is, “passionate about his work”.  Yeah… someone’s “passion” should not require me to play dodgeball at work because he cannot accept federal agency guidelines for compliance.

However, Doctor Ramani who has been featured on several Youtube psychology channels, her own channel, and has lead Ted Talks on Narcissists and the abuses in all its forms.  This includes cases of narcissistic abuse within employment.  Here is a link to her interview at MedCircle titled, “Is Your Boss A Narcissist?” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P-5q0C31m4&feature=youtu.be .  In this the doctor analyzes she talks about how some managers have work place enablers who allow for managers to have all around bad or inappropriate behavior because they explain away the behavior as, “hey they get results” and/ or “hey they are mean but, you always can trust them to tell the truth”.  The truth is this is a perverted form of enabling narcissistic abuse and using the concept of authentic leadership as the excuse.    

In summary authentic leadership is not about who can be more of a jerk boss and call it honesty and result driven management.  That just perverts the concept of authentic leadership which is being one’s self enough to focus on tasks while still being a human.  When it comes to authentic leadership especially where remote employment is concerned.  Remembering in these COVID lockdowns as it reshapes our economy, we as leaders need to remember a little humanity and caring goes a long way.  And that humanity is the true sign of authentic leadership.