I received the following email yesterday (edited for length and anonymity).

Miki,

With 20+ years of experience managing I thought I had seen it all, but I have a situation that I am at a loss on how to handle.

Short version, 6 months ago I hired an entry level engineer, with just a year of experience, but lots of potential I thought. Potential he is not living up to. I do not see the energy, initiative and go-get-’em attitude he projected in the interview. His peers complain that he is not pulling his weight and he acts as if showing up and performing at minimal level is enough. He has received positive input when he does something well, but I have been candid regarding the problems, offered suggestions for improving, etc., and blunt talk that if both his work and his attitude didn’t change he couldn’t stay.

So when all this came up again in his 6 month review I was taken aback when he acted like it was the first time he had heard any of this. OK, I’ve run into denial before, nothing new there.

But what totally floored me and the main reason for writing is that the day after his review I received a phone call from his parents (they were both on the line) demanding to know who the hell I thought I was not to give their son a 6 month promotion.

I said I was in a meeting and would get back to them; any suggestions besides the obvious none of your damn business.

I called him and after a bit more discussion he agreed that it would be best to turn this mess over to the company HR department. Fortunately, they were already aware of the problem and he had plenty of documentation to back up both the performance problems and the ongoing conversations about them.

The parental call was the final nail and the young man will be terminated for cause.

We all read articles about helicopter parents, in fact, I just read one on how great a problem hovering is for colleges.

Some undergraduate officials see in parents’ separation anxieties evidence of the excesses of modern child-rearing. “A good deal of it has to do with the evolution of overinvolvement in our students’ lives,” said Mr. Dougharty of Grinnell. “These are the baby-on-board parents, highly invested in their students’ success. They do a lot of living vicariously, and this is one manifestation of that.”

What really angered me was the way the episode affected the manager. He found himself questioning his own skills, as if he could have done anything that would offset 23 years (and counting) of parental protection.

What chance do any of these coddled kids have at maturing into leaders, not only positional ones, but de facto leaders? Will their parents help articulate a vision and then chastise those who don’t follow?

What do you think?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilsonb/2897692632/

You know the old saying, ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’; for kids it’s more like ‘damned when they do and damned when others don’t’.

Kids stand less chance of developing into strong, balanced, ethical adults now than in past decades; not just in the US, but globally—they are heading for mediocrity.

If you think I’m being overly pessimistic consider the following.

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default. …

“The new rule, suggested by “involved parents,” is a temporary measure that will be replaced by a pre-season skill assessment to make fair teams.” (Hat tip to Elliot Ross for leading me to this article.)

Great lesson to teach our future leaders—don’t excel, don’t try too hard, don’t strive too much, don’t field a winning team and, whatever you do, don’t follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Magic Johnson, Dr. Jonas Salk or any of those who surpassed their peers by a wide margin.

Helicopter parents are nothing new, but their actions are getting more outlandish. And whoever said that life is fair?

Meanwhile, here in the land No Child Left Behind, the pressures have gotten so great that some teachers and administrators have turned to a repellent solution.

Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers — thousands annually — cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.

Cheating ranges from accessing current tests and using the questions in test prep classes to tampering with tests by correcting incorrect answers.

Cheating seems to be a fact of life these days and not just the US; when you add the pressure of funding and paychecks people have been known to make rotten decisions.

People rant on about what teachers are paid, but, in fact, they make far less than your average teen babysitter.

The average teacher’s salary (nation-wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour.

Keep in mind that the 6.5 hours doesn’t count meetings, preparation, study, admin or any of the other things teachers have to do.

And that $1.42 is to educate, not babysit, them.

Try hiring a neighbor kid for that and you’ll get laughed off the block

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thost/170369652/

If you were the boss and 40% of your employees said they were more interested in non-monetary rewards and felt that evaluating them on a single factor for jobs that required multiple skills were unfair would you proceed anyway with merit pay based on a single factor and expect it to be a good motivator?

That is the basic question in the drive for merit performance for teachers.

A March survey of teachers provided an inside look at their thoughts.

Teachers don’t want to see their students judged on the results of one test and they also want their own performances graded on multiple measures.

Most value non-monetary rewards, such as time to collaborate with other teachers and a supportive school leadership, over higher salaries. Only 28 percent felt performance pay would have a strong impact and 30 percent felt performance pay would have no impact at all.

Of course, worker input won’t slow management’s moving forward (rarely has, rarely will)

The biggest problems with merit pay is defining and applying valid measurement of success.

For example, only 6 percent of teachers surveyed said graduating all students with a high school diploma was one of the most important goals of schools and teaching, while 71 percent said one of the most important goals was to prepare all students for careers in the 21st century.

Whereas standardized test are the holy grail of school administrators.

Merit pay has a checkered background whether you are looking for proof that it works or proof that it doesn’t.

The problem isn’t the money, it’s the structure put together to award it.

Keeping it fair means keeping it free from political pull and other forms of favoritism. It means acknowledging that teachers can’t control what is happening to the kids in their classes and finding a way to account for that.

“Your mother and father just got a divorce, your grandfather died, your boyfriend broke up with you: those kinds of life-altering events have an effect on how you do in class that day, through no fault of the teacher whatsoever.” –Debra Gunter, middle school math teacher in Cobb County, Ga.

One survey result was surprising because it actually creates more work for teachers, but it was held by the majority.

A majority of teachers surveyed said they would like to see tougher academic standards and have them be the same in every state, despite the extra work common academic standards could create for them.

This definitely makes sense, especially given the mobility of the US population, but it’s unlikely to ever pass muster with state and local school administrators. It would also be interesting to see how it flies helicopter parents, considering it’s their complaining that has fostered termination of “tough” teachers.

Money has always been the quick fix, used by managers and parents alike, to achieve their desired ends, even though there is no proof that it is effective or sustainable. And there is no reason to think that teachers are any different.

I think that if the structure and standards aren’t improved along with embracing merit pay then success is unlikely.

What do you think?

Image credit: JadeGordon on flickr

What’s going on? This post is a call for your thoughts.

I simply don’t understand what today’s parents are thinking—assuming they are thinking at all.

18 years ago Wanda Holloway tried to hire a hit man to improve her 13 year old daughter’s chances of making the cheer-leading squad.

More recently Lori Drew helped her teenage daughter fake a MySpace page that drove another teen to suicide.

Parents launch efforts to destroy teachers who don’t hand out ‘As’; they scream at referees and umpires when they disagree with a call; they threaten coaches who don’t allow their kids to play enough.

On one hand they enable their kids to avoid all responsibility and on the other castigate them for not living up to whatever parental dreams they are trying to realize.

I know that it’s not all parents; and this isn’t a new rant, but it’s one to which I keep coming back.

And it came back with a vengeance, in fact you might say my outrage cup runneth over, when I read that Senator John Ensign’s parents paid off his mistress.

“The wealthy parents of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) gave $96,000 last year to the staffer who was then his mistress and to her family, his attorney said yesterday.

The gifts to Cynthia L. Hampton and her family were given “out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time,” according to the lawyer, Paul Coggins.”

Ensign’s parents aren’t Gen-Xers and probably not Boomers, so this problem isn’t new.

You read stories about helicopter parents all the time, but when does it end?

How can anyone expect a person to make good choices when their mistakes (and worse) are ‘handled’ for them by their parents?

What do you think about Ensign’s parents’ actions? Obviously, pay-offs aren’t in the same class as murder; are they better or equal with bullying?

I don’t have any answers, but we’d better find some—and fast!

An open discussion is a place to start so let’s hear your thoughts.

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: Army.mil on flickr