Managers have the power to hire and fire, to promote and demote, and to assign responsibilities and take away responsibilities. Managers do affect their employees' short-term, and oftentimes long-term, career opportunities in both positive and negative ways.
Be very careful in never using your power as a manager to get away with things that you wouldn't be able to get away with if you didn't have the title of manager. I've seen managers swear at their employees, publicly humiliate them, and talk to their employees in a degrading manner. I've seen managers get away with telling dirty jokes that most employees would never even consider saying. Why did they do it? Because they could and they allowed themselves to abuse that "privilege."
I encourage you to read an extraordinarily powerful book called, Broken Trust: Stories of Pain, Hope, and Healing from Clerical Abuse Survivors and Abusers by Patrick Fleming and Sue Lauber-Fleming. It includes five stories from priests who abused children and young adults and three stories from adults who were abused. (You can learn more about this book by clicking here. In reading these stories and the commentary from experienced psychotherapists you might see more clearly the following:
- How inexplicable horrors and terrible abuses of power can actually happen.
- The long-term affect of abuse on the victim and the victim-abuser.
- The necessity of avoiding even the smallest exploitation of your power as a manager.
- The need to see employees as human beings and not as objects to be manipulated for your individual success or pleasure.
Abuse of management power happens far too often, and most of it happens at a subtle level that doesn't impact the manager's career. The responsibility falls mainly on the shoulder of the manager to monitor his or her own behavior and to avoid taking advantage of the power that comes with the title of manager.
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