Job Discussion Forums

[Wigwam]

I thought I would try to find out what people thought about good management. What is it that a good manager (education) as apposed to what some might say is a bad manager. Perhaps good and bad are not appropriate. Perhaps we should be using effective and non effective. I have had some excellent magaers in the past but very few in the Middle East. Is my experience typical?

[ckhl]

You're not a supervisor, are you?

[Spin duck]

As you imply, we're into the spurious world of the subjective and definitions. Nonetheless ( ), I'd have thought that management (like many forms of job position, including teaching) requires you to be ready if necessary to compromise on - or even deny - what 'goodness' instincts you might otherwise have beyond the workplace.

So 'good' management doesn't necessarily involve acting as a 'good' person might do, although it can. In places where one feels that one's position is more tenuous, where one's livelihood is less secure, or where there is more potential for personal power (for the megalomaniacs), then one is more likely to be prepared to sacrifice or deny this sense of 'goodness', assuming that everyone has this sense anyway . Once this is sacrificed, one may deny that it has been sacrificed in order to appease one's own fragile conscience.

Jung, Collected Works, 7:240:

"Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid and violent animal. The bigger the organization, the more unavoidable is immorality and blind stupidity. Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representatives, puts a premium on mediocrity, on everything that settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible way. Individuality will inevitably be driven to the wall. This process begins in school, continues at the university, and rules all departments in which State has a hand. In a small social body, the individuality of its members is better safe-guarded; and the greater is their relative freedom and possibility of conscious responsibility. Without freedom there can be no morality."

[dmb]

I have one golden rule to management. Don't ask others to do something that you are unwilling to do do yourself.

[ckhl]

A good manager remains as remote and hands off as possible and doesn't enlist faculty for their own self promotion.

[Wigwam]

ckhl
Just to reply to you first - I have in the past been involved in management but I am at present a humble teacher.

For me a good manager would be one that respects the staff they work with, allowing them the space to develop and contribute while at the same time keeping everyone in the loop. He or she would need to work harder than everyone else yet be available if needed.

[stoth1972]

A good manager in the UAE? All the things that I think make up a good manager: backbone, loyalty, willingness to showcase his/her employees' strengths, open to suggestions, not passive-aggressive, fair, qualified, willing to admit fault, willing to defend his/her reports...if a manager in the UAE (particularly in the field of Education) possessed most or all of these skills, this manager would not survive long.

Is this a broad question, or this really about what makes a good manager in the UAE (from the perspective of upper management and the owner)? Or is this was makes a good manager to his/her reports in the UAE?

[Wigwam]

Stoth
I suppose the UAE and the gulf in general can make you cynical about management as amny do not conform to the model you might expect back in your native country. I would like to hope that there are manegers who behave how you have outlined even if they are here in the UAE. I don't think it is naive to expect managers or those in responsible positions to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. Perhaps the teachers are to blame for allowing managers to behave in ways that frustrate. I think the terrible truth that exists, especially here on Daves Cafe, is the idea that all mangers are bad and out to get you.

[stoth1972]

It's not that I think that managers in the UAE are out to get me or anyone else (though that has been known to happen! ). I think that the administrations generally like to promote people who they think will work well for them. This often translates into underqualified candidates, who have not worked successfully as managers in their home country, or anywhere else. Those candidates are generally not 'boat rockers'. And even someone who behaves transparently in those positions can be labelled as a 'bad fit'. A manager in the UAE who tries to make the work environment fair, open, constructive, or works on behalf of his/her subordinates: All of those qualities can set that manager up for being confrontational and difficult in the eyes of the owners/upper management.
I really blame this on the clash of cultures working together. What's open and honest to a North American is confrontation and intimidating to the Lebanese, the Irish, the Iraqis, the Emiratis, and so on and so on and so on.

[eha]

Couldn't agree more with the last poster: not only in the Gulf, but everywhere I've worked, the questions that arise in a multicultural environment aren't addressed. Also, it's not only in the Gulf that the conformist, 'the company man' is seen as the best manager, although it's usually a bit more immediately obvious in the Gulf. But even given the lack of ability to deal with complexity, a basic commitment to good ole 'respect' , or even 'good manners' could have gone a long way to solving some of the really appalling situations I've seen in my twenty-something years in the region. It isn't usually the people lacking in these qualities who get promoted to management (though some jocks do make it through the 'old boys' network system) : but it's invariably the people who lack any capacity to control the results of these behaviours in the working environment, who are made managers. An infinite capacity for non-personhood, not rocking the boat, and 'blaming-the-victim' will get you everywhere.

[Wigwam]

The clash of cultures mentioned by the last two posts hits a nerve. There is even a great gulf between an American perspective as apposed to a British view of how management is or should be done. I have noticed for example, and this is not meant as any kind of slur on one nationality - the USA position seems to rely the command structure whereas the UK position seems to emphasize the opposite. Europeans seem a lot more relaxed and the Irish seem to prefer an honest approach where everything is said to'clear the air'.

[eha]

Good for the Irish. What I personally can't stand is the reluctance/inability of most managers I've ever come across to deal with unprofessional behaviour. I know there will always be office politics--- but the kind of guttersnipe stuff that goes on in some places (and no nationality I've ever worked with is exempt from this) is simply the basis for a hostile working environment. It should be up to managers to MANAGE this sort of thing--- but most of them, you end up explaining the tenets of Human Rights Law to them, when they're the ones who should be exlplaining and defending it.

[veiledsentiments]

The main problem with education management in the ME is that few, if any, of them seem to have any education or experience in management.

Getting an education degree or an MA or a CELTA does NOT mean that one knows anything about managing.

And it shows... glaringly...

VS

[stoth1972]

[eha]

When I worked at a famous institution in the Gulf, we used to call the line managers 'capos', the name given by concentration camp inmates to those prisoners bribed by marginally better conditions, to 'supervise' their fellows (grass on them, etc.) The outrage this gave rise to, was not based on our lack of political correctness.