the job as supervisor would be easy except for the people.
 

holy hell.

i am successfully trudging thru my stint as temporary supervisor. i just got extended until end of Nov. they are piling on work like i have never seen before. we have Webex meetings to schedule more WEbex meetings.

the interview for the permanent position is gonna happen any week now. i have been studying. i got this. my boss is hopeful for me. i have cleaned up my two areas like a rockstar. my budgets are balanced and my projects are staffed beautifully.

but seriously, i do not like the people aspect of supervising. hahhaha..discipline, $$hitty performance, etc. BLEECHHHH. it's awful. i am a public employee, so you could imagine. i go to bed at 8:00 PM!! like a senior citizen. hell, when i shut my lights off, i can see the lights of my 92 old neighbor and she is still awake!! i am awake by 4:00 am to get ready for my commute.

my wife calls me worried about me. i told her this morning i am 80% gonna turn down the promotion if it is offered to me. i am not gonna follow a life of stress. i have no kids, so i dont need the money. i admire the people chasing more and more. not me. i dont think i am that guy.

you have us homie bros to listen . vent is ok. work sucks mostly, sometimes it gets ok.

I don't like managing people either. I like to do the hands on stuff which I get to do less of these days. I feel for ya.

I worked in the field in a union job for 14 years.
Then I did 14 more years as a supervisor.
The last 13 years I was a manager.

As a manager, the budgets and staff meeting and looooooooooong hours sucked.
Disciplining people I'd worked along side for years sucked even more.
There was always an adversarial relationship between the union members and management.
A lot of them hated me for doing my job, but not the ones that matter.

In the end, the manager was more interesting.
I didn't have to do the same thing everyday, except for the endless calls (sometimes 5 a day if things were going badly).

All told, retirement is better.

3 more years if i win the arguement with the wife.

we are about to paper scissor rock.

That's because you are a rock star, sir! And yes, my stints in managerial positions were similar, and that's why I'm not doing that today.

Exactly. Give me technical work or manual labor and I'm fine. I'd probably also be OK with being the manager of a group that was staffed 100% with awesome folks that just got the work done

I was curious where you were with this. Good luck in whatever you do. I think it's a good call. Stress, especially chronic, does have a pretty major impact on health.

There are folks that really excel at and love being in management. I'm certainly not one of those.

I really failed at this part of my business Vash. At one time I had a crew of guys working for me. If only I could have managed it better ( the people that is) , who knows where I would be today .
I walked . Let my commercial lease expire, bought a building in the country and let everybody go . 20 years working by myself now
It was really difficult for me. I think some people have that personality trait. I just did not .
Make sure to do what is right for Vash

Supervising takes a special breed. You probably do have this, but you've got to learn to delegate and accept the results (more or less, depending, and that's the critical call). If you're not getting results from people under, they need to be moved. That's probably not easy working for the state.

So I feel for you if you give a siht. If not so much, then you should be grand.

And yes, if it weren't for people, decision making is good stuff. Makes you think.

Best job I ever had was superintendent. I had no employees of my own, only subs. I could say anything needed to be said and it was law. I fired people in the middle of the day if I needed to. Get out, and don't come back. Most of my contracts were T&M so I could do that and that's why I like T&M. If done right, that's the wholesale rate in construction. Sorry I digressed.

Good luck whichever way you choose.

Were you not exciting about the position when it was first offered it to you?

That's a great point. Managing and leading (2 different things) may be intrinsic to some, but for most, they probably need to be learned. Vash went to school for a long time to learn engineering. Management probably requires training too. I'm not sure it's the sort of thing that there are good classes for. My guess is that most of it is either trial and error or for some folks, the result of being under a good leader and manager at some point that you could learn from.

I had a title change back in March that was not of my doing. I took a step back and only have 7 direct reports and manage about a 20% of the volume of clients/revenue I did before.

I have so much less stress it is not even funny.

I am also doing a better job using the vacation I accrue as well.

yea.blindly excited.

i had no idea what it was about. i just jumped. i am pretty good at time management. it bums me out when the ones around me are not and it affects me.

for example. one guy volunteered for an extra project. he is failing miserably and with grand fashion. he has a HUGE powerpoint presentation to make and he doesnt own a single slide yet. soo..now i have to cover his work for two days while he gets to work from home catching up. none of my work load went away to get his stuff done.

literally, he is bad at time management so i have more work to tax my time management skills. there would be no end in sight.

i am lucky. i thought they would make me put his presentation together instead. and as temp guy, i am "YES MAN"

Yeah, that's the problem. If you've got a team of folks that aren't rock stars, that's when being the manager sucks. I suspect that part of the manager's job is to try to manage/lead folks to become all that they can be and only allow them to bite off what they can chew, and if you've got someone that's just not a good fit, to get rid of them one way or another. Basically, I think a manager needs to be able to build his team into the sort of group where he doesn't have to worry about them doing their work and doing it well. Don't ask me how to do that. I don't know. That's why I'm not a manager.

And sure, if someone says "we want to promote you," most folks are going to be very excited because of the possibility of more power, more money, more responsibility, and/or a big ego stroke.

Ok. First of all relax. You have two strikes against you walking to the batters box and you know what I am referencing. Maybe three if I think about it.

I am very much an introvert away from work. I have close friends I have known since HS, poke and tickle stuff still on the phone. I laugh just thinking about the knuckleheads. In the past 40 years, maybe 5/6 I am really close with.

I say that because I have managed, still manage, small and large organizations, which I am really good at. I had a female colleague, one of the first female Naval Aviators, Test Pilot, engineer like you, ask me how I make this whole managing people thing look so easy.

I have written this before: Acting Classes in college, the hardest course I took and I am not even sure why I took them. But I learned to pretend to care.

Don't get me wrong: I do care about the important stuff, but my GAS meter is broken on the whiners.

Here is what I would do if I was you: Take the promotion if offered then learn how to set a tone for the ENTIRE office, the people you manage. You will regret it if you don't.

I ran a 450 person program office, billions of dollars a a year, for five years. When I was selected for the job I brought the senior team leads in individually, handed them a list of requirements I expected them to abide by (cleared by legal, remember this was a government job), things that were important to me.

I then brought the contract support companies in one at a time, gave them the same sheet.

I worked down the line from there, everyday, ten minutes before lunch, after lunch etc...I met every single person individually or in small, focused groups.

Set the tone. Lead. You can do this.

Quick Sea Story.

I met with a retired Navy Seal, E-9 last month. He is working some complimentary projects to ours in the Virginia Beach area and we had lunch, butt sniffing like all small companies do.

There is a point where we both realize we are introverts just making sure we tend to our respective companies.

He tells me: "I always feel like I carry 25 coins into a room, a day, an operation, a conference. Every interpersonal meeting takes a coin away from me. At the end of the day, coin less, I am exhausted."

"An extrovert shows up without coins and comes home with more than 25, refreshed."

You can do this. You will be pissed if you don't try. Trust me.

Lots of great stuff in there. I was thinking, but didn't type, that one of the places that I thought you could probably learn, to some extent, leadership/management (2 different things) "on the job" was the military. How much of the military experience do you think helped besides your acting classes?

Above, Paul (Seahawk) makes a point about acting. I never thought of that and I even took an acting class. I sucked.

However, there are classes and books about managing. They are called by a different name though — negotiating. Now I've read a few and there are hundreds, so I won't recommend any particular book.

But here's what comes around to what Paul said, successful negotiation means you need to set the tone and the end result before starting. Of course the goal has to be realistic. There is a lot to be gained by being a good negotiator.

BTW. one of the best books I have read was written by a former FBI hostage negotiator. He now teaches. There are more than one of these guys, too, and they have the nuts.

Or people die.

Continuing with Paull's coin analogy, a good negotiator will split the coins up with each party with skin in the game walking away with some. In the end the successful negotiator will have the ones that have the most value. Nobody said the coins are all of equal value.

^ ^^^ I've watched that negotiator guy, his name slips my mind right now. His motto: never split the difference. The goal is not to get people to say yes, but rather they say: 'That's right' - and have that mind set in management to have your people agree with your plan, rather than just them saying 'yes'......

What's your lesson here? Would you do the same thing next time? What's the lesson your employee took away?

Your answers will determine what kind of 'life' you're going to have as a manager.

My daughter took up a manager position. She likes it now especially as she works from home. I think it is easier to tell people what to do through say skype or zoom.

Up your game, kick butt and I believe you said you were retiring in three years. If it was me I would go for it if you can handle it. Of course it is your decision. Obviously your boss knew you were capable.:)