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Having a helicopter manager can bring you down. Its exhausting to have a boss who constantly monitors you, requires you to check in all the time, and takes away your authority to make decisions. This sort of micromanagement can lead to decreased employee morale, lower productivity, and reduced job satisfaction, according to experts. Whether intentional or not, helicopter managers send clear signals that they do not trust their direct reports and are concerned about the work getting done correctly, says Matthew Owenby, chief strategy officer and head of human resources at Aflac. Helicopter managers can often exacerbate burnout by making employees feel that they are not respected, their time is not valued, and they are not given any autonomy at work. This can quickly lead to demoralization and disengagement. Its a growing problem, as many leaders appear to be increasing monitoring in the workplace. Owl Labs’s 2024 State of Hybrid Work Report found that 46% of workers reported that their company added or increased employee productivity and monitoring software in the past year. This has, in part, contributed to the rise in workplace anxiety as 43% of employees say their stress levels increased compared to last year, while 55% of managers say they are more stressed than ever, says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs. If youre dealing with a helicopter manager, here are a few things experts suggest you can do: Create an accountability plan The first step is to have a direct conversation about expectations and deliverables. I recommend focusing on establishing clear goals and metrics to shift the conversation from hours worked to results achieved, says Weishaupt. The goal is to shift the focus from constant surveillance to a results-oriented approach. Its important to set outcome-based benchmarks that give both employees and helicopter managers confidence that expectations are being met or exceeded, he explains. This framework outlines key deliverables and success metrics that are agreed upon, continues Weishaupt. With this understanding in place, your manager may reduce the need to hover. To start this conversation, Weishaupt suggests saying something like: I’m committed to our team’s success and wonder if we might explore setting outcome-based benchmarks that would give both of us confidence that I’m meeting or exceeding expectations. I’d be happy to draft a proposed framework for my role that outlines key deliverables and success metrics we could review together. Ask for feedback While your boss may have good intentions, their attitude is likely giving their reports the impression they are not trusted, or making them insecure about their abilities, says Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and vice president of HR Services with Engage PEO. Directly asking your boss for feedback can strengthen the accountability dynamic and cause them to lighten up. During your next check in, try asking for feedback on areas where you can improve, says Matsis-McCready. Its also important to demonstrate that you are open to feedback. When you ask good questions, your manager may not feel the need to hover as much, explains Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Dont Do. A sample script, per Morin, could sound like this: I want to make sure that I meet your expectations with this task. Can you share any feedback you have so far so I can make sure Im on track and so we can address any concerns up front? Id also like to hear your input on how youd like to devise a plan for me to keep you updated moving forward. This exchange may facilitate a calmer approach. Avoid pushing back on their management style, cautions Morin. Instead, show that youre looking for guidance and youll alleviate a lot of their fears. And when you do get criticism, its important to remain diplomatic. Avoid disagreeing with feedback even if it doesnt sound quite right, says Morin. If you argue, youll appear defensive and theyre more likely to hover. Proactively communicate If you take a preemptive approach to keeping your boss in the loop on your progress, this could lead to less monitoring. Increasing the number and frequency of status reports or creating a weekly meeting, followed by a written summary of the discussion with action items and focus areas, will demonstrate to some helicopter managers that the direct report is getting their work done and managing their time successfully, says Owenby. Seek out additional training Another thing to discuss with your boss is whether there are additional training opportunities you can pursue. Not only can these classes or training sessions boost your career, they can help increase your bosss confidence in your skill set. Approach the training with enthusiasm, and your manager may allow more autonomy and independence.
Category:
E-Commerce
Amid tariff whiplash and the rejuggling of global trade, GE Vernovas CEO Scott Strazik is finding a way to stay relentlessly optimistic. Strazik returns to the Rapid Response podcast to share how the company plans to continue its success as one of Wall Streets top-performing stocks, despite looming supply chain disruption and market unpredictability. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. GE Vernova is now one year into life as an independent public company, much to celebrateyour revenue rose to $35 billion. In 2024, GE Vernova was the year’s fourth best performing stock. Again, a lot to celebrate. But in 2025, the external environment hasn’t been as friendly. The Trump tariffs have everyone scrambling. How do you think about this moment? How do you think about it compared to a year ago at this time? Well, our end markets really haven’t changed very much, Bob. I would start there. I mean, we continue to see very strong end markets in our larger core businesses and gas power, in our electrification and grid businesses. So, frankly, there’s going to be moments of dislocation between the stock market and our end markets. It doesn’t mean that depending on where the tariffs go, that doesn’t create an opportunity for us to prove out our nimbleness and managing our global supply chain, and we’re going to have to do that. But I think it’s frankly an opportunity for us to demonstrate how much we’ve grown in our first year as a public company to be able to operate in this kind of environment. How do the tariffs practically impact your business? I mean, you’re a global business, so changes in global relationships and reputation, all of that requires some adjustment. Yeah, I think even if you take a step back and think about some of the stuff I’ve talked to our investors about on where we want to make investments, we want to invest in our business where we can improve the durability or the resiliency of our supply chain, and that’s simply because we have a lot of organic growth that’s coming in our businesses, irrespective of any policy changes. Now, policies are going to change, they’re going to evolve. This is going to force us to relook at where we source certain things. It’ll force us to revisit our terms with some of our suppliers in different locations, but we know how to do that. So, we don’t want to be too fast to respond as we’re kind of trying to make sense of everything. But I’d also rather be a company that is quick on its feet. In this environment, President Trump announced the tariffs on a Wednesday afternoon after the market closed. Rest assured by Friday afternoon, our teams were actively working evaluation plans of what our alternatives are. Now, it doesn’t mean within 40 hours you pull the trigger in a dynamic period of time. So, we’re working it pretty hard right now to figure out what our alternatives are, and with a growing backlog, to the extent our backlog is growing so substantially, that also puts us in a privileged position with our supply base to come and say, “Listen, this is what it’s going to take to keep serving GE Vernova.” It’s almost like there’s been a pullback around the very idea of globalization that maybe it’s not good to be a global organization. Do you think about that? Well, when I think about my first four months of the year. I mean, my first trip of the year was to Singapore and Japan, the first week of January. I had a great trip in the Middle East in February visiting Saudi, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi. These are all important markets for us. I think we’ve got opportunities to serve these markets throughout, and we’re going to work really hard to earn those opportunities. At the same time, long before announcements with tariffs, the reality is there has been an evolving shift with globalization. There’s certainly been a lot of strategic moves towards concepts of decoupling from the Chinese supply chain explicitly. So, we’ve been working that over a long period of time. Now, the last week certainly has been broader than any one country, and with it, it forces you to really revisit it in an even more intimate way, what you do and where you do it, but we can do that. We’re capable of taking that on, and I’m highly confident we can use this moment to make ourselves a better company for the long term. You have announced investing $600 million in U.S. factories yourself creating over 1,500 jobs. Yes. How much does GE Vernova need to be an American company? I would say more we need to be a local company for our local markets. I think in your bigger markets, you’re going to have a local supply chain to serve that market, local teams to serve that market. We’re a global company where, at this moment, one of our most important local markets certainly is the U.S., and that’s why we’re investing into that market. But we’re not going to not invest in some of these other countries that are attractive and markets too to be local there. There’s been some speculation that the speed with which U.S. manufacturing can ramp up to replace things that might have come from abroad, that that’s going to take a while and there’s going to be disruption. Is that something for your business that you see that you worry about, or is that part of the nimbleness, I guess, that you’re talking about on the part of your team? We do have a fair amount of industrial footprint in the U.S. that allows us to build on existing assets. So, the $600 million investment is reinvesting in existing assets, 1,500 jobs to locations that already have the concrete poured. They already have the cranes. They already have the logistics with the railroad adjacent to the factory. So, we can move reasonably quickly. Now, to the extent the policy environment drives us towards greenfield investments to reindustrialize parts of our supply chain, that would take longer, truth be told. And that’s a multiyear journey that, at this point, we aren’t necessarily evaluating, but we will keep looking in that regard. But first and foremost, we’re going to keep trying to eliminate waste in our existing processes and build upon the assets we have, and we feel like that can carry us for a eriod of time. Now, where we don’t have it, as an example, we announced and closed an acquisition of a supply chain footprint from Woodward. That was a vertical supply chain integration of a small part of Woodward’s business, but for our gas business, an important part of our supply chain where we thought it made more sense to just have that internal. How much do you tune your long-term decision-making when there’s noise and change and pressure in the near term? We need to scrutinize how long the status quo is, for sure. And that can be hard to do in a volatile moment that we’re in. But if nothing else, it gives us a chance to really challenge ourselves on what we have been doing, whether there’s a different way to do it. And that’s the way we talk about it internally is: “This is an opportunity for us to really revisit past assumptions and think about how we can be better.” Now, in some cases, we may gain conviction with exactly the play we’ve been running. In others, there may be a better alternative. I mean, do you have, sort of, I don’t know, leadership principles or lessons that you use as a touchstone when things do get volatile? Well, we’re not going to suck our thumbs and cry on our beer as things kind of change. We want to use change as an opportunity to improve. In that regard, this moment when we’re just reaching our one-year anniversary as a public company is a moment when I feel pretty confident we’ve got our feet on the ground, and we can play into this and use this moment of change to play offense on not just how we want 2025 to go, because we won’t change 2025 in any material way certainly from a supply chain strategy, but we can use 2025 to challenge ourselves for the next decade, and that’s very much what we’re doing.
Category:
E-Commerce
Given all the recent bad news on the world stage, from tariffs wars to the war in Ukraine, it’s no wonder Swedes are seeking a moment of zen by watching a livestream of “The Great Moose Migration” (loosely translated from the Swedish, “Den stora älgvandringen“). The 24-hour event, which runs for 20 days straight, kicked off on Tuesday. Since it first aired in 2019, it’s been providing soothing entertainment for millions of Swedes each year around this time. That first year, nearly a million Swedes tuned in to literally watch moose walk through forests and swim across the ngerman River, all captured by remote cameras and drones, the Associated Press reported. By last year, the sleeper hit had a whopping 9 million viewers, who followed along on Sweden’s national public television’s streaming platform, SVT Play. This year, the livestream started airing a week earlier, as the moose got an early start due to warmer weather. From now until May 4, viewers can watch dozens of moose migrate to their favorite pastures located about 187 miles northwest of Stockholm, the country’s capital. Sure, there’s not much happening, but that’s why so many people find it relaxing. So much so, that more than 78,000 Swedes have joined a Facebook group with fans sharing photos of their TV screens when moose appear, according to NBC News. In fact, The Great Moose Migration is part of a larger global trend of relaxing, nature-oriented livestreams with not too much going on, which began in 2009 when NRK, Norway’s public broadcaster, aired a seven-hour train trip across the southern part of the country. That trend has even extended to the U.S., where thousands of captivated viewers have tuned in to watch a couple of wild eagles, Jackie and Shadow, and their growing family via the bald eagle nest cam in California.
Category:
E-Commerce
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