A look at Q3

If ever there were a pattern of management you would not immediately associate with alienated direct reports, it would be the easygoing, benevolent pattern (behavior that the Dimensional® Model of Managerial Behavior labels as Q3). Ironically, outgoing, relaxed managers can — and surprisingly often do — produce alienated direct reports. Believing that people will work their hearts out for a manager they like — a manager who exudes affection and concern — they sometimes succeed only in producing frustrated or indifferent direct reports.

In fact, the paradox of Q3 management is this: The harder managers try to make their departments "one big happy family," the more they strain to be forbearing or even lax in their demands, the more likely they are to turn off and alienate some of their best employees.

The fact is that many people don't want a womb-like job that envelops them in constant warmth and comfort. Nor do they want to work in a one-big-happy-family setting where constant good spirits prevail, failings are always condoned, and pressure and strain are as rare as glaciers in the desert.

For many people, the most disheartening thing about working for an acceptance-seeker is his/her persistent refusal to face unpleasant facts. Convinced that people are only happy in tranquility, and bent on making their direct reports happy, the acceptance-seeker spends much time fending off the ominous, the foreboding, and the troublesome. If a direct report comes to them with bad or dispiriting news, they either gloss over it ("Take it easy; it's probably not as bad as you think"), promise to take action ("I'll fix the matter fast") but never do, or pretend not to hear and change the subject. The idea is to make sure nobody gets demoralized or upset.

However, sometimes that's exactly what does happen. By refusing to heed bothersome facts, managers frequently upset their direct reports. They begin to feel a sense of futility and ineffectualness.