Of course there's always pressure to perform more, work harder, give more. That's kind of the job of management, but the missing piece of the puzzle is that it's also the job of the employees to manage their own resources responsibly.
I find this so interesting. I'm in a position where I'm constantly advising managers on how to manage, particularly when it comes to difficult employees.
I agree that part of being a manager is to push employees, which sometimes requires testing boundaries. But I would think a quality of a good manager is knowing the difference between good, productive pressure and burnout level pressure. I would also assume a manager has a sense of their subordinates workload and activity.
@Malcat I appreciate that you're at least making it clear that you expect employees to articulate their needs and boundaries--a lot of managers don't, and as a result, employees don't feel they can articulate boundaries.
You're right that managers don't appreciate push back and complaining, but the line between appropriate boundary setting and complaining is extremely thin and extremely subjective.
It is, it's a real challenge to find that balance and some conflict is unavoidable, especially with particularly bad managers, obviously. However, one should never voluntarily work for a particularly bad manager long-term anyway, that should be a personal boundary.
So assuming you're dealing with a not total-asshat manager, then yes, establishing and maintaining boundaries should be a critical part of an employee's skill set.
Should all managers know the difference between good pressure and excess pressure? Sure, in a magical, ideal world, yes, but I can say this as someone who has been guilty of pushing some staff far too hard, it's almost impossible to tell most of the time if they're hiding it.
I would have one staff member whom I could dump any amount of organizational work on and she would thrive, but another in the same role would crumble. Meanwhile the other had more natural leadership skills, so I could push her much harder to take on tasks that involved corralling other staff members, but the first woman would disintegrate under the pressure of having to communicate anything to other staff members.
These were women the same age, with the same education, in the same role. How could I possibly know their specific capacities in specific tasks if they didn't somehow communicate them to me???
Likewise, my last boss is a lovely, but kind of clueless person. We hired a new clinic manager together shortly before I left because I was doing most of the management. The manager was in awe of how valued I was in my role and how the owner was so cautious to never overburden me.
Flash forward and I visited the clinic a year after leaving and the owner is raving about how the new manager knows so much and has taken on so many extra accounting tasks that are saving the clinic so much money. She's so happy.
I talk to the manager after and in less than 3 minutes she's in tears sobbing about how she's over worked and feeling horribly under appreciated. She can't understand why the owner was so respectful of my burden, but is so nonchalant about dumping more and more on the manager's plate.
Well, I was extremely firm in my boundaries. The new manager isn't.
Same boss, totally different reality. Boss is not an asshole, she's one of the most caring employer's I've ever known, but she's busy and doesn't know what's going on unless people tell her.
