As a newly anointed manager, you will be the toast of the town or at least you should be. Everyone wants to be your friend. Hell, everyone IS your friend. You can do no wrong. The Regional loves you. Your big producers love you (or at least don’t hate you.) Your mid-level producers love you. The trainees love you. Operations love you. The assistants think you walk on water. Headquarters loves you.
Welcome to the honeymoon.
Like any newlywed, everything seems easy. Sure the Regional gave you a bit of a tour through personnel. If you have one that really cares about you, she might even have told you the truth. But probably not whole truth and certainly not nothing but the truth – mostly because they don’t know the complete truth. And if your Regional is something less than the second coming of Christ, there is a good chance they don’t have the time or interest in giving you the complete skinny on your people.
Welcome to the honeymoon.
Sometimes the honeymoon is short. If you are brought in to stomp out a raging forest fire, you probably know that the fireman sometimes gets burned. Then the chances are your honeymoon will be about twenty minutes. For most newly appointed managers, the honeymoon will last thirty to ninety days. But with a few select producers, your honeymoon will seemingly never end. The Serious Suck Up will appear to be your best friend in the branch.
Sandy had Nellie in her office. Nellie would stop in to see Sandy almost every day. Sometimes a couple of times a day. Usually the agenda sounded like she was simply interested in Sandy’s well-being. She was also a source of office information. And it was good information. Nellie was fairly new to the business and was busily adding clients. She was on track to make her bogeys and was doing mostly fee based business. In short she was the ideal young producer.
By now, you are ready for the other shoe to drop. What was wrong with this person? Did she have an affair going with her assistant? Did she demand piles of favors in return for her good behavior? Was she secretly funneling some undermining info to a clueless Regional to try to get Sandy’s job? No. No. And no. Aren’t you the cynical one after reading just a few webpages!
Believe it or not sometimes there is no other agenda. Sometimes your producers will actually like you and trust you and want to help you. Sure, you have to be on guard not to treat your suck up any better than anybody else (although the occasional spiff wouldn’t hurt any either.) Sure there could be some sort of other agenda going on and making them your confidant of all secrets is a really bad practice. But you will actually find good and decent people working for you. People that you are proud of day in and day out. People who deserve a break sometimes. People who are loyal to you and your firm come hell or high water.
With them the honeymoon goes on and on.
There is one risk with a serious suck up who happens to be the good citizen type: you take them for granted. Do so at your peril.
Got a Suck Up story of your own? Got a different take? Let’s hear it at manageia2@gmail.com
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