Do You Support DOUBLE STANDARDS On Your Team?

Back in November, I wrote a post about Double Standards and the impact managers "doing as I say, not as I do" has on team morale (see post here).

I want to revisit the subject of Double Standards. It appears that some of the leaders who say that Double Standards have no place in their organization need to do a reality check.

I'd like to help with that. Therefore, I have a few questions for managers to help them determine if Double Standards (no matter how small they seem) might actually exist in their offices:

Do you have a policy or rule stating that:

1. Team members must park in less convenient parking spaces so customers have the best ones...but then you end up parking right up front because you're busy and you have to run out a lot and you're only there for a minute (or hour or day)?

2. Lunch is exactly one hour, but you habitually take longer even when the lunches aren't business related...because you work more than 40 hours a week and so the rule wasn't really meant for you?

3. No food and/or drink are allowed at the desks because it looks unprofessional to customers...but you actually have an office and a door so your office looks like a small convenience store? After all, the customers don't go in there.

4. Snacks and/or drinks are provided only for the customers so you make staff members bring their own snacks and drinks...but you're so busy that you didn't get to take lunch or you have to work late and so you deserve to get free snacks from the company.

5. Staff must greet or, at least, acknowledge customers within 3-5 seconds of them entering your establishment or the team members get in trouble...but you don't directly work with customers so you can go so far as ignore them. I mean, it's not really your job, is it?

And, the list goes on...

If you don't think your team members notice such small, little things, you are probably smoking something illegal.

You want to help morale in your office? Then make sure you follow your own rules. Nothing hurts team attitudes more than bosses who apply one set of rules for the team and then have a "special" set for themselves.

Do you have any other examples of rule breaking like above?

Double Standards

Do as I say and not as I do.

Isn't that what we often like to tell our children? Isn't it often what we subliminally say to our team members at work? Don't our actions often give us away here?

It's been a long time since I was in the Service, but waaay back then, we used to have to periodically wear our chemical protective suits and gas masks 4 hours at a time while performing our normal duties. The idea was to help us get acclimated to wearing the gear so we would be better prepared in case of a gas attack. As you might imagine, the suits were very hot and the masks were very hard to breathe through, especially when making any exertion at all.

If any of the soldiers were caught sneaking a breath of fresh air during the exercise, they would definitely get in trouble. However, many of the leaders would find opportunities to sneak away and peel off their masks for a few minutes. The thing is, the troops weren't stupid. They knew their supervisors had gone "missing". Sometimes they even saw their bosses "cheating."

The excuse was that they were older and had issues with heat or lung capacity, but I suspect the real reason those leaders took off their masks was they thought they could get away with it AND they deserved special treatment because their rank afforded them such. It was just one more bit of "evidence" to the soldiers that a double standard existed even though it was regularly denied.

We probably wouldn't like it if our bosses adopted a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude, would we? Then why would it OK to embrace that same attitude with our folks?

I challenge all of us to take a look at the requirements we place on our team members and ourselves; then we need to evaluate how we measure up to our requirements. Our team members probably know, so we should, too.