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Working Supervisor's Support Kit A collection of tools and information that will help you do a better job as a boss.

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Tom wasn't a "hi po." That term wasn't invented back in the mid-1970s when he got out of college and went to work. Back then they called people like Tom, "fast trackers."

He set the record for being promoted from the Management Trainee program to Assistant Manager. He moved soon to Manager in a small facility, followed by a stint at corporate headquarters. Regional Manager was next. He was less than thirty.

He's in his early fifties now. Tom has changed companies three times, but he's still about where he was twenty-five years ago. What happened?

One thing was that Tom was promoted and moved so fast in the beginning that he never had to clean up the messes he made. He developed some bad habits, but he could have undone them with a little work.

More seriously, Tom started acting like he was entitled to keep moving up. When he got his first "Meets Expectations" review, he decided that his boss was jealous. When he was passed over for promotion the first time, he wrote it off to "politics." When his numbers came in below targets he blamed the economy or the weather or … you get the picture.

First, Tom stopped on concentrating on improving performance and started concentrating on himself and what he was "due." After a while he was viewing his life in the rear view mirror, not really sure what had happened.

Tom like to tell the young "hi pos" in the company about his early career. He's like the high school sports star who constantly tells other people about the big game and how he saved the day. The hi pos avoid Tom. They know what happened and they swear they won't let it happen to them.

But it will, at least to some of them. Every generation has some people who show great promise, perform well for a while and then just seem to lose momentum.

It doesn't happen all at once, but slowly and subtly. First there's a day when you don't give your best and you realize that no one noticed. That makes it easier to coast a little the next day. For a while it seems to work because you've built a reputation, but then there's that "meets expectations" review or the promotion someone else gets. One day you realize that you now have the reputation of a "coaster," and it will take a lot of work to change that.

Boss's Bottom Line

The only way to be sure you don't wind up like Tom is to work hard every day and review your performance every day and keep working at getting better. When you concentrate on performance and growth, there's no time to wallow in self-congratulation and no incentive to start coasting.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.