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The Previous Manager

the previous managerThere are cycles in life, just as there are in nature. Just like how winter turns to spring, people grow, change and sometimes move on. We take comfort in the reliability of cycles; we can count on them because we know what to expect. You can see that in the way we talk to each other about them. Commenting on the changing of the seasons or what people you know are up to now is an easy conversation starter. How we talk about cyclical changes is just as predictable as the cycles themselves.

In particular, when someone leaves a management position, there’s an excellent chance that the person who replaced them will tell anyone who listens that their predecessor was an idiot who had no idea what they were doing.

I was first made aware of this phenomenon by the VP of HR at a company I worked at long ago. We were in a management meeting and they pointed out, “Everyone always says ‘the last manager before me was an IDIOT!’” Their delivery was punctuated by a rude hand gesture and a not-at-all-subtle sarcastic eye roll.

This resonated with me, not least because I was newly promoted into my role, and I had said that exact thing repeatedly in the past several days. That led to some introspection into my own behavior. It’s one of those things that I’ve carried with me ever since, due in large part to the fact that the HR VP from long ago was right. People do it all the time. All. The. Time. Over the course of my life, I’ve seen it play out in front of me repeatedly.

I’ll admit that there are some instances where it was indeed the case that, yes, your predecessor was in fact an idiot. If someone was promoted or transferred because their predecessor was dismissed, they’ve probably got a firm justification for their opinion.

Sometimes it can be an extreme example. Recently, one of my contacts had to relocate and spend a month in another city running their location there. The reason it was extreme was that,  in addition to assuming the normal manager duties, they also had to participate in an ongoing forensic audit and cooperate with the police regarding the criminal investigation of the former manager.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of instances where people stepping into a role don’t disparage their predecessor. Recently, the inventory manager at one of my biggest clients retired. Unlike some companies I’ve known that get thrown for a loop when a key person leaves, they actually had a succession plan in place.

That’s because almost 10 years ago they were in a crisis when one of their employees in senior management passed away unexpectedly. They learned from that experience and made sure that senior managers have people on their team who are trained and developed for future senior roles.

I bring that up because, in that instance, my new contact had nothing but great things to say about their predecessor. That’s a far better scenario to work towards creating.

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