Activities To Make Subordinates Understand The Importance Of Heads And Managers

Dear All friends,
i read all the posts and appreciate the suggestions given here. in this case i wish to add one more reason to why subordinates do not respect their seniors. in one of the organisation i was HOD of the department and i faced the sake type of problem, when i investigated in to the matter than the fact came out that the seniors management i.e. director/owner of the company. give commands to the juniors by breaking the hierarchy. thus notion about the manager or HOD changes in the mind of subordinates that the manager/HOD has no value in the system. hence subordinate begins disregarding his seniors.

From my over four decades of industry experience, I may suggest an useful solution.This issue need to be addressed from behavioral science point of view.Do not concentrate much on employees domain to find solution.Here the solution lies with the Managers.Train/motivate them to get imbibed within themselves the management style of"Leading from front with self example".Once this is achieved,the employees will start feeling/fearing that they are not "indispensable".Automatically things will start falling in their slots.
Caution: This is a time consuming process and need management support with lot of patience.

Dear Teju,
I read with great interest the postings from all members but I was missing out something which I finally got in Shri Umakanthan's reply viz.,"......... The most unfortunate in organizations is the arrogance, be it intellectual, technical, professional or positional normally exhibited by superiors.....".This is a common problem , especially in organisations where some jobs require high degree of skill.Hospitals and Airlines are two examples.In the former the specialist doctors feel they are above everyone and even God is next to them. I'm not generalising but it is true with most of them.In case of Airlines the commanders , who have absolute jurisdiction on a flight once the door is closed , start thinking that they are keeping the airlines afloat ! Therefore they need to be given some training whereby they realise the importance of other tasks- in your case the task of HOD.

I will agree with partial portion of PARAKRAMA's word. Nowadays, most of executives not known the difference between HOD & BOSS. Most of HODs having the boss attitude. The problem will come from higher level only. They are expecting as all juniors should obey the word of boss(it may wrong / right).