It doesn't help that supervisors sometimes make less than their top subordinates. Supervisors are at the bottom of the management heap, and often give people who have higher pay and less demanding jobs the kinds of bonuses that they would themselves get if they had not been promoted.

In our Agency, a GS 12 bargaining unit employee has a much easier workday, and more lucrative workyear than does a GS 12 supervisor. So, guess how many GS 12 bargaining unit employees give all that up to become supervisors? Very Few.

In SSA, top management has little regard for line management at all levels. The top managers are only interested in brown nosing thier bosses; they have little interest in actually providing service to the public.

I have been with the federal government for more than 20 years and I would assess the relationship between management and labor as somewhere between hostile and indifferent. From time to time Congress attempts to improve the situation, but the effort is resisted or met with minimal compliance. I don't think one party is worse than the other in this regard. They are both pretty bad. Just the same, federal employment is good when compared to the average job in the private sector (which is on shaky ground in our current economy).

Great article thanks for illuminating the report. In my experience, I have seen and worked with managers from across the spectrum, super duper to super stinker, and so there are no generalities, as good management is an intangible that has no correlation, either you have it or you don't and while training may marginally increase managerial competency, a superior technocrat can still be a social dimwit, in short you can't make filet mignon out of hamburger helper. Now where did I put my red Swingline stapler...

The first line supervisor of most federal employees is the section or branch chief.

How many section and branch chiefs are sent to Charlottesville, Auora, or Shephardstown?

Almost none.

Therefore, the supervisors of most federal employees do NOT receive proper management training.

The good news is that the article is right on in pointing out the major problem in the way that most first-line managerial positions get filled, i.e., assume that a good widget maker will be a good supervisory widget maker. The bad news is that this dysfunctional phenomenon has been endlessly pointed out by various sources, including earlier MSPB reports going back at least to the late '80s to my recollection. (In 1971, I was put into a supervisory position solely on the unwarranted assumption that being a technical expert would translate into being a good supervisor - WRONG! It took a long series of painful trial and error - mostly the latter - efforts before I learned the rudiments of good maangement, and mostly on my own.) The obvious question is why has a problem that has been deplored without significant dissent for so long been allowed to continue. The silence in response has been eloquent in itself.

I've taken these surveys for years. The problem with surveys like this are that they are naturally skewed in the negative direction. Gruntled employees tend not to participate at the same level as disgruntled employees. I'm not saying there are no problems. I am skeptical of the results.

Until the Federal Government offers health insurance and other benefits for domestic partners, they cannot possibly be a model employer. The government is at least a decade behind the private sector's implementation of these benefits, which has a large impact on recruitment and retention.

Too often we do not provide appropriate pay to attract qualified managers. When pay is the same grade as BU employee with more responsibility, less chance for awards, less access to things like flexiplace why take the job. Federal Government has totally screwed up its pay system and is having great difficulty attracting new managers. Without qualified managers no program can work. Fed is now paying for its lack of respect for its managers. Look for it to have major problems soon

The management associations have correctly identified the problem but the solution may have evaded them. Part of the problem with evauating performance is that federal employees have come to expect a high performance rating rather than an honest one. Not every federal employee exceeds expectations or is outstanding. If they do, expectations are set too low. Mandatory supervisory training is not a new idea. Training has to be part of an overall strategy that includes good performance standards, objective evaluation criteria and honest appraisals. I do agree that the new administration needs to ensure that training is not sacrificed in the interest of short-term budget goals. However, there are more cost effective ways to deliver training. Check out the price of courses at FEI and the OPM Training Centers.

By design, FAA's first level of air traffic supervision does very little. Until it became possible for supervisors to designate whether their employees received one of three possibilities for yearly performance raises (one of them being zero), they mostly handled minor personnel issues that could have been resolved by one supervisor for an operational environment of 40-50 controllers, instead of one for every 4 or 5.

Occasionally you'll find one with what it takes to facilitate the operation, e.g., coordinating effectively with traffic management functions, other areas, etc., but those are exceptional.

They're basically strike insurance. They usually lack the certifications to work traffic like normal controllers. But because this Administration decided to keep them in the legacy supervisor pay bands while they slashed pay for people like me by 30%, I knew supervisors hired one year before me, making literally twice what I made to work traffic. I never had any vindictive supervisors, but the pay differential was and is outrageous. I don't know where the idea of more pay for less measurable work comes from, but FAA has embraced it, bought it dinner and drinks, and offered to spend the night with it.

There are probably other agencies where capable, self-starting employees are treated well by their senior management, and are left alone to do the work in the way they know best. FAA isn't one of them, and even though I loved the job, I can't imagine returning to the agency after I finish my graduate degree.

At my agency, management believes that all nonmanagers are idiots but the second one is chosen for management, one becomes all knowing and all wise. Most think management is defined as "I am a superior being and my employees must brownnose me." Nonmanagers with ideas are labeled troublemakers because only managers are allowed to have ideas - unfortunately their ideas are not much and strictly designed to sound good on a resume. In fact, managers are strictly interested in resume building and seek projects that sound good while ignoring leaks in the dam so to speak. Managers are chosen because they fit the cookie cutter or they fill a quoto or they help someone's personal agenda. Ability is irrelevant. There are many horrible managers who torment, ignore, or otherwise abuse their employees but nothing is ever done and complainers are labeled troublemakers. And things are getting worse - the number one theme of the agency these days is that the most important thing is that everyone is happy. Second priority is the CFC campaign. The work is some where way down on the list of priorities.

PS - clarification: "everyone is happy" means "management is happy because the employees brownnose them and keep their mouths shut about problems."

kmcdfma wrote:

Too often we do not provide appropriate pay to attract qualified managers. When pay is the same grade as BU employee with more responsibility, less chance for awards, less access to things like flexiplace why take the job. Federal Government has totally screwed up its pay system and is having great difficulty attracting new managers. Without qualified managers no program can work. Fed is now paying for its lack of respect for its managers. Look for it to have major problems soon

What are you smoking? Lack of "respect" for managers? Difficulty attracting new managers? Please spare me the drama queen histrionics. As another poster noted, the first-level supervisors have little or no training. They go for the increased pay, period. They get the job, all too often, based not on any potential for managing people, but on sucking up to the hiring officials day in, day out, for years, and stabbing co-workers in the back. The article was spot on. And, as for the notion of less chance for rewards, that is downright ignorant. See the recent GAO report regarding SES ratings, including bonuses. No GS-13 professional would ever see that kind of bonus. Ever.

Federal government jobs are the only good jobs left for the reasons stated: stability (two million non-feds have lost their jobs so far), good pay (we are receiving a 5% pay increse), good benefits, and flexibility. These are worth suffering mediocre management in some, but not all, cases.

An overlooked competency that is critical for supervisors is work and decision delegation. Many supervisors and, really leaders at level in government, function as task doers rather than managing others to do the work and make task/project/program decisions. I have rarely met a manager who spends the majority of their time managing and developing their staff. Yet delegation and coaching is not even listed in the recommendations for training and development objectives. Targeting the right competencies is a good first step towards changing the leadership culture.

I'd definitely call Uncle Sam a work in progress when it comes to being an employer. Due to several years of budget cuts, my agency has essentially eliminated training, equipment purchases (i.e. computers, printers, even office supplies), building maintenance, and frozen hiring - even to replace workers departing from already understaffed divisions. In spite of all these cost-saving measures, my agency recently 'postponed' indefinitely our performance bonuses, budgetary conditions, only one week before they were to be distributed (though the rest of the Department under which my agency falls received their bonuses...). Definitely a work in progress, to say the least.

I'm one of those government employees who left the job because of the supervisor. The agency I worked for had no concept of fitting positions to the best qualified - it was definitely more of the good ole' boys club. An amazing waste of govt. $$$'s. And I guess I've gone from the frying pan to the fire - the federal agency that I work for now is clueless on training for management. I just had a GS 14 step 1, brand new to the govt. by a month, tell me that he would be my supervisor. I'm a GS14 step 5, in the govt. for 10 years, a supervisor for over 5 of those years, with Management Certification through accredited colleges. His only justification for being my supervisor was that he would have an (S) after his title, so no problem that he hasn't had any training or that I have more time in the federal service and in grade - he's a good friend of the boss, climbing the ladder! Time to find another job - at another federal agency - any suggestions on what agency knows what they're doing when it comes to "management"?!!!

But herein lies the problem. What really happens in government is that the person is first appointed to the supervisory position THEN gets the training! They are usually promoted only for the reason that they do a good job based on their technical skills. they are NOT promoted because they could make a good manager. The theory behind all of this is that you can teach people to be good managers, sorry but that doesn't necessarily hold true.

Some people, just don't get or have management and interpersonal skills that are needed in the workplace. Part of this "promote than train" is that salaries are out of whack with reality. In order to keep say a good scientists or engineers, an organization has little choice but promote to a managerial position in order to get the pay to retain the person. Face up to it, a one or two week course is not going to give you the ability to manage a group of people, at least for some. Some just don't get it or have that inclination.

Where this problem is particularly bad is in agencies that are fundamentally scientific or engineering in nature. Scientific and engineering has been taught in our universities as really solitary occupations. It is only recently that teams have been created for scientific/engineering projects (certainly the space program is a good example).

But university training has not kept pace with this. At the University level, ability to work in teams is not rated only knowledge of your subject matter counts. In some cases, poor interpersonal skills are held as a hallmark of "genius", the "forgetful scientist" aka the mold of Albert Einstein, come to mind. In point of fact, society itself in effect "glamorizes" these geeky outward personalities. Sadly, it also tends to discourage people from going into science and engineering.

I agree that management is terrible and receives no training. At my agency, discrimination and cronyism is high at the management level. To become a manager and get the (slightly) higher pay, you have to brownose the right people and hope they like you. I don't play that game so I get the boring work while younger less experienced employees get the more interesting work.