A managment lesson: Mr. A and Mr. B

I had a conversation with a guy at work today. He told me he couldn’t understand why the top manager Mr. A needs to mop the floor by himself, he can ask other staffs to do it. Since started working in this restaurant, I have been paying attentions on its management. So I had a little thought on his comment.

There are two managers in the restaurant, say “Mr. A” and “Mr. B”. They are totally two different persons with totally different managing styles. Mr. A is the top manager and Mr. B is below him. However, this doesn’t make many differences on their managing styles. Mr. A is “fix-then-teach” type, whereas Mr. B is more like “blame-until-you-fix-it”. Say if I make a mistake a work, Mr. A will fix the mistake first, and then when everything is ok and not very busy, he tells me what I did wrong. But Mr. B will just standing there, point out the mistake, tell you what to do, but he never help you to fix it.

This makes a huge difference when it’s busy time. Say when it’s lunch time, lots of customers around waiting to order. I make a mistake by putting different sauces into a burger. When Mr. A sees it, he will come and make a new one immediately and keep everything going without saying anything, but I do realise I made a mistake and will learn from it. But if it’s Mr. B, he will just point it out, standing there telling me I made a mistake instead of helping me fix it. One person doing nothing is a huge waste of human resources when it’s busy, but he just doesn’t realise that and cross his hands, watching me fix the problem by myself.

I believe people learn from action more effectively than verbal orders. Like Mr. A mopping the floor this morning, rationally when other staffs see that, they would think “since the managers are doing, I should do it too”, but not “the manager is doing it now, so I don’t need to”. If it’s Mr. B, I guess he just ordered somebody to mop it.

From an employee’s point of view, which one do you like better and more willing to work with? For me, Mr. A.