Undercover Boss – Reinforcing Bad, Fake, Management?
The new show, Undercover Boss, debuted after the Super Bowl. I did not watch it because I am almost NEVER interested, intrigued, or impressed by so-called reality TV shows. But two bloggers who I respect offered their thoughts.
Check out Wally Bock’s sharp-as-a-butcher-knife assessment in his post called, Undercover Boss: A Repellant Piece of Trash (come on, Wally, tell us what you really think).
And check out what the HR Capitalist has to say in his post called, Undercover Boss: You Wish That’s All It Took to Change Your Business...
What drives me crazy about these programs is how they reinforce that management can be fake, contrived, and self-serving. The TV show’s producers would likely respond that this is meant to be entertainment. Sure, that’s fine, but it is entertainment that reinforces that our leaders are idiots and that employees are too stupid to figure that out. Wrong and wrong.
So what does this mean for us? We need to work harder to show our employees our real sides, our caring sides, our smarter sides. There is a lot of value to spending time learning what’s going on in our organizations, but do it in ways that reinforce and improve relationships, trust, commitment, and connection.
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