Management amplification

A brief observation, but one that took me a long time to spot.

There is an effect that I call “management amplification” that takes place when a manager talks to a member of staff about their work. This is irrespective of whether the manager is just explaining their concerns with their work or just asking questions. That effect is to amplify the words of the manager to make them sound much stronger than they intend.

There is nothing I can do to stop this amplification, but if I’m not aware of it then this can cause all sorts of problems. To give you some examples, if I say:

I’m a little disappointed by that

then management amplification makes it sound like:

That’s very poor and really could have been done so much better

and if I say:

That’s very poor and really could have been done so much better

then management amplification makes it sound like:

That’s absolutely terrible, I can’t believe you’ve messed it up so badly

and so on.

So what can I do about this – obvious really, I just always have to say things at one stop lower than I would have done otherwise. The one oddity is what to do when I want to say “I’m a little bit disappointed” but I don’t want the amplification. In that case I discuss it without showing my concerns and ask questions like “If you had to do it again would you do it the same way?”.

Now to be fair management amplification doesn’t happen all the time. Sometimes people get to know their managers well enough that they either take them at face value or know how to translate what they say.  In some cases, especially where a manager is over the top in shouting criticism then some people just learn to switch off an ignore them.  However, even when ignored or understood this management amplification is still there, but not that many managers explicitly recognise it.

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