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Develop, expose, and stretch …. three words managers say to get staff to do dogsbody work.
In any organization, there will always be tasks that need to be done but have no real value, unless it is not done. What then happens is that management will decide to take the equal misery approach and rotate these tasks between the divisions.
When it comes to a manager’s division’s turn, the manager will single out a junior staff (because he or she doesn’t know better) and tell them that this task, while not in their Terms of Reference, is to develop them. The manager will also add that doing this task is good exposure and that this is a stretch goal they have set as part of the junior staff’s professional development. All of which are, for a lack of a better word, lies.
To me, leadership is built on trust. And trust, like an egg, is fragile and once broken or cracked, impossible to patch back completely. My advice is therefore to tell the staff the truth. Tell them that it is dogsbody work and ask them to do the task anyway. This way, when they find out the truth about the task, which they eventually will, they will not feel misled or lied to. They may even respect you for respecting them enough to tell them the truth.
Development, exposure, and stretch goals are powerful people development tools. Don’t make them into a euphemism for “sai-kang.”
“Sai-kang” is Singaporean colloquialism for menial work.
