Are you an employee who works with colleagues and a team manager? Are you a fresh graduate who is new to an office setting? Are you a recently promoted team manager who still needs guidance from his or her mentors?
No matter what your role in the office is, you may interact with a boss who you always see as, well, bossy and sometimes inconsistent or insincere. While an ideal boss is hard to find, a good manager knows how to handle most office issues gracefully and effectively.
If you ever wonder why your boss is so grumpy, he or she might be struggling with something that you may know nothing about. How about trying to be a little more sympathetic and learn about the common office issues that they face? Here are five of such problems.
Communication Issues
Misunderstanding is common in teams. You may belong to a team of ten or twenty different people with a one team goal, but you are still ten or twenty different individuals with varying backgrounds, ideas, and habits, too. Your manager tries to bridge the gap in communication between individuals, allowing everyone to work in harmony and become a good team for the business.
Absenteeism
Do you notice that your teammate sometimes show up for work an hour after his or her designated shift? If that colleague is often late or on sick leave, that may be the reason for your boss’s outburst this morning. So much rely on a team member showing up for work, and your manager may be stressed out because that colleague missed an important meeting or presentation with the upper management today. Absenteeism plagues office managers of any industry, and if you want to help your team, try to always show up at work on time and give ample notice should you happen to plan for a vacation leave.
Performance Challenges
Maintaining high quality scores and overall productivity is any team manager’s dream. After all, you’re all there to do a job well, and if you’re not achieving that, everyone will be under stress. Learning curves can be addressed through refresher courses and regular one-on-ones between a team member and manager, but there are employees whose performance can indeed be considered barely there.
Behavioral Problems
In relation, behavioral problems can also be on your manager’s list of daily woes. Not everyone is a good employee like you, and it’s indeed challenging to fire somebody just because he or she doesn’t perform well or show up at work at all. While behavioral issues can sometimes be visible only to those who really look, it does happen in teams like yours.
Upper Management Pressure
While you worry about what’s on your plate, your manager thinks about you, the team, and your manager’s own bosses. The upper management has its own business responsibility, and your manager also carries that burden on top of effectively managing the team. Pressure from the upper management is indeed a problem among team managers in various industries today.
Be a good team member and try to perform well at work. Someday you may even become a team manager yourself.