Max talked fluently about teamwork and about never being afraid of hard work, but never did any himself.
Max did, however, listen patiently and kindly to employees' woes, and he did give excellent advice.
He did not help them work, but he helped them find and use the tools they needed to do the work themselves.
When faced with a roadblock in productivity, Max would ask an employee to find out how to fix it. When the employee came back with an answer, he would listen, then tell the employee to go ahead and try that. If the trial failed, he would listen to the employee explain how and why it had failed, then let him try again. If the attempt succeeded, Max gathered all the troops together, described in cheerful, false detail how HE had helped the employee to solve the problem, then praised the employee in that public venue.
Max - let's reiterate here - never did a moment's actual work. He never even wrote the mandatory annual performance reviews for his employees; he told them to write them, and sent them back if they weren't sufficiently laudatory. Then he added a few more flattering words, and signed them. In corporate meetings, he described in glowing terms what his section had accomplished, taking some credit for himself, but then giving all the remainder of the credit to his employees, by name, in those public venues.
For many years, this is how Max worked. Doing nothing, taking some credit he didn't deserve, then spreading all the rest of the credit around. He was promoted, then promoted, then promoted again. Some day, Roger suspected, Max would be promoted to a job where he would HAVE to do something. But he was such a likable guy that this worried rather than pleased Roger.
Life goes on, but sometimes it doesn't. One day, Max dropped dead at work.
One of Roger's first thoughts upon hearing the news had to do with how ironic it was that Max had died in the office, since he had never actually done any work there. But over the years since Max's death Roger met and re-met others who had worked for him. All of them had been through Max's catch-and-release praise process; not a single one of them expressed anything but sadness for the loss.
He had been a pretty good boss, in fact, as far as they were concerned - especially compared to others they had worked for before and since. He had been kind, patient, supportive, and had given a lot of credit where it was due. In the long run, it didn't matter that he had never even filled out a time card if he could get someone else to do it. He had at least done no harm.
This may seem like damning with faint praise, but Roger knows now - if he didn't know then - that in most organizations this might be the best that an employee will ever find: a boss who is kind, is patient, does not stab employees in the back, does not interfere with them doing their best, and only steals part of the credit.
RIP indeed.
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