Supervisor's attitude and employee's performance.

Purpose — The employee-supervisor's relationship is crucial to a library's success. The purpose of this paper is to explore how supervisors interpret staff traits and behaviours including the ‘setting up-to-fail syndrome.’ Design/methodology/approach — The approach is a literature review of the set-up-to-fail syndrome. Findings — Supervisors are not aware that their first impressions of an employee is formed within the first few days of employment. Labeling the employee may be setting the employee up for failure from the start. Supervisors should be aware of this syndrome. Originality/value — The paper makes library supervisors aware of the set-up-to-fail syndrome and how to alleviate this syndrome in their workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]