Lessons, Models, and Stories

BY ALAN BRUNACINI

We have trudged through our monthly discussion about how the capability and personality of a boss can influence the internal environment of an organization. Our ongoing discussion touched on how the internal characteristics of a fire department, such as positive, progressive, and sensible, can create a workplace that brings out the best in the humans in that system. These characteristics are like most organizational things and exist on a scale (big-little, positive-negative, hot-cold, nice-mean, and so on) that describes a full range of stages of the state or place on the scale of that factor. Both ends of the scale reflect the existence of an opposite condition: No matter where the factor lands on the scale, there is a boss that goes with that organizational element who is responsible for either the positive or negative score. That score, most of the time, is a reflection of the boss’s approach, capability, and personality. We have literally “spent” years in this column discussing how a functional boss can behave in a way to consistently land on the positive end of the scale.

It is critical for serious students of boss performance to understand the details along the effectiveness scale in terms of the boss’s behavior and to use their personal and positional resources to continually move to the positive end of the scale. The linear geometry of how the scale describes a range of conditions is fairly simple and straightforward; the scale process predictably gets complicated when the players (workers/bosses) show up and act like humans.