It's Okay to Manage Your Boss

The Step-by-Step Program for Making the Best of Your Most Important Relationship at Work

Bruce Tulgan

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470901564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione
• Index: Business

Get what you need from your boss

In this follow-up to the bestselling It's Okay to Be the Boss, Bruce Tulgan argues that as managers demand more and more from their employees, they are also providing them with less guidance than ever before. Since the number one factor in employee success is the relationship between employees and their immediate managers, employees need to take greater responsibility for getting the most out of that relationship. Drawing on years of experience training managers and employees, Tulgan reveals the four essential things employees should get from their bosses to guarantee success at work.

• Shows employees how to ask for what they need to succeed in their high-pressure jobs
• Shatters previously held beliefs about how employees should manage up
• Outlines what employees must get from their managers: clear expectations; the skills needed to perform their jobs; honest feedback, recognition or rewards

A novel approach to managing up, It's Okay to Manage Your Boss is an invaluable resource for employees who want to work more effectively with their managers.

CHAPTER ONE

Refuse to Be Undermanaged

You show up at work one day, and much of your job seems to be coming unglued: you have a voice mail from your manager telling you the project you worked so hard on for the last two weeks is all wrong. You think, Well, I told you I didn’t have enough experience to take that task on! Then you receive an e-mail from a manager in another department who is hounding you about “taking way too long” with yet another project; you need to get that to her “immediately.”

Meanwhile, you were planning to spend the morning finishing up one of your routine tasks—dotting some i’s and crossing a few t’s—but you’ve received so many urgent e-mails, you figure you better answer them before you do anything else. Last week the same scenario played out, and you forgot to go back and dot the i’s and cross the t’s; in the end, the task had to be redone at the last minute. You ended up working very late that day, and everybody was mad. You don’t want to do that again, so you’ve been trying to lie low and stay out of everybody’s way. But now you have these managers messing with your day before it even starts!

What’s going on? You think of yourself as a high-performer. But you start second-guessing yourself: One manager tells me to do one thing. Another tells me to do something totally different. How am I supposed to know what takes priority? How am I supposed to know what is up to me and what’s not? The bosses here don’t have any idea how to manage! Only rarely does one of them spend enough time with me to give me the guidance I need, or to make sure I have the resources to do the job, or to help me problem-solve. Half the time I don’t get any recognition for the work I do well, no matter how hard I work.

If this is anything like your situation at work, either now or sometime in the recent past, then you are not alone!

What’s going on here?

It is tempting to look at the scenario described above and blame the managers or even the entire enterprise. Maybe this company has a disproportionate number of managers who are true jerks—but probably not. It is more likely that the problem is hiding in plain sight: Undermanagement.

Across all industries and at all levels of organizations there is a shocking and profound epidemic of what I call undermanagement. It is the opposite of micromanagement. The vast majority of supervisory relationships between employees and their bosses lack the day-to-day engagement necessary to consistently maintain the very basics of management: clear expectations; necessary resources; real performance tracking; and fair credit and reward. In fact, most employees report that they feel disengaged from their immediate boss(es); that two-way communication is sorely deficient; and that employees rarely get the daily guidance, resources, feedback, and reward that they need.

In my book It’s Okay to Be the Boss, I explored the causes of our pernicious undermanagement epidemic and tried to show readers how just about any problem in any workplace can be traced back to a case of undermanagement. Although undermanagement is not a household word like micromanagement , it should be, because undermanagement is a success-crushing syndrome, and it is worth fighting against. Indeed, the following consequences of undermanagement make the impact of micromanagement look like nothing:

• Unnecessary problems arise.

• Small problems, which could have been solved easily, turn into big problems.

• Resources are squandered.

• Employees perform tasks and carry out responsibilities the wrong way for longer periods of time.

• Low-performers hang around, causing problems for everyone else (and collecting the same paycheck as everyone else, too!).

• High-performers get frustrated, lose commitment, and think about leaving.

• Employees are not set up to perform at their best.

• Managers spend their management time in all the wrong ways.

You may not be aware of undermanagement in your workplace. But look around you. I bet undermanagement is costing you every single day. It robs you of positive experiences in the workplace and prevents you from reaching greater success. Undermanagement gets in the way of your learning and development, makes it harder for you to optimize relationships, and diminishes your opportunities for new tasks, responsibilities, and projects. Undermanagement very likely causes you to earn less than you should and prevents you from gaining more flexibility in your schedule and in other work conditions.

So who is responsible for this undermanagement epidemic? After all, isn’t it the manager’s job to manage? Shouldn’t the bosses be taking charge? Yes. And I believe managing is a sacred responsibility. If there’s a problem, the boss is the solution. If you are the boss, then you are the one everyone is counting on.

Unfortunately, too many leaders, managers, and supervisors are failing to lead, manage, and supervise. They simply do not take charge on a day-to-day basis. They fail to spell out expectations every step of the way, ensure that necessary resources are in place, track performance, correct failure, and reward success. They don’t know how to, they don’t want to, or they are just afraid to.

Most managers are under a tremendous amount of pressure. They typically move into supervisory positions because they are very good at something, but not usually because they are especially good at managing people. Once promoted, most new managers receive very little in the way of effective management training. And the legacy of leadership in most organizations great and small is still “hands off ”: “Here’s the mission. Figure it out. Wait for us to notice you. We’ll let you know if you do something wrong, and the system will reward you the same as everyone else.”

The pendulum of management thinking, books, and training has also swung in the exactly same, wrong direction toward hands-off management. Popular books have naively insisted that employees do their best work when they are free to manage themselves. According to this false-empowerment approach, employees should “own” their work and be free to make their own decisions. Managers are merely facilitators; they should not tell employees how to do their jobs but rather let them come up with their own methods. Make employees feel good inside, and results will take care of themselves.

But let’s face it. You know very well that somebody is in charge and that you will be held accountable. You do not have the power to do things your own way; you are not free to ignore tasks you don’t like; you are not free to do as you please. You can only make your own decisions within defined guidelines and parameters that are determined by others according to the strict logic of the enterprise at hand.

When your managers give you responsibility without sufficient direction and support, that is not empowering you. That is downright negligence. Unfortunately, most managers have bought this false-empowerment philosophy and don’t take a stronger hand when it comes to managing; they don’t even perform the basic tasks of managing. Most managers, then, undermanage. Here are the top seven reasons why they undermanage and how that affects you directly:

One: They are afraid of micromanaging

I often say that micromanagement is a giant red herring. Is there even such a thing as “micromanagement” at all? Of course, some managers overdo it sometimes, but the vast majority underdo it. Real micromanagement, if it exists at all, is quite rare. The funny thing is that most cases mistaken for micromanagement turn out to be undermanagement in disguise. Let me show this through three scenarios:

1. Your manager asks you to check in with him every step of the way in order to make basic decisions or take simple actions. Is this a case of micromanagement? No. If an employee is unable to make basic decisions or take simple actions on his own, it’s almost always because the manager has not prepared the employee in advance to do so. Your manager must make sure you understand how to accomplish your tasks and carry out your responsibilities and must equip you with the tools and skills you need to do your job.

2. You make decisions and take actions without ever checking in with your manager. When she finds out about them, you get in big trouble. Burned for taking initiative? Yes. Micromanagement? No. If an employee does not know where her discretion begins and ends, that’s because the manager has not spelled out guidelines and parameters for the employee up front. Your manager has to painstakingly clarify what is within your authority to do, and what is not.

3. Your manager is constantly tangled up in your tasks, or you are getting tangled up in your manager’s tasks—in the end, you just can’t tell which tasks belong to the manager and which ones belong to you. Isn’t that micromanagement? No. It is a result of your manager’s failure to delegate. Your manager has to spell out exactly which tasks belong to you and which ones belong to her.

Of course, there are cases in which managers do overdo it. Sometimes this is the result of an obsessive-compulsive manager or a manager who wants an assistant at his beck and call—and that is not a management relationship. Or maybe it’s just the manager’s first day managing a new employee. The good news is that when managers accidentally manage too closely, they can just step back a little. No harm done. But if they undermanage, the harm is pervasive and damaging to everyone involved.

Two: They are afraid of being unfair by not treating all employees the same

Where does this fear come from? First, an aversion to any kind of litigation risk has led to a blanket default presumption in the working world that differential treatment of employees is “against the rules.” Second, political correctness has caused many people to self-censor any mention of differences between and among individuals—even observable merit-based differences. Third, a popular misunderstanding of psychology and human development theory has people mistakenly believing that in essence, “we are all winners.” Thus, the underlying theory that many managers have walked away with is that because every person has innate value, we should treat everybody the same.

This sense of false fairness often means managers are unwilling to provide employees with extra rewards when they go the extra mile. Since managers can’t do everything for everybody, most of them take the easy way out, rewarding nobody specially. Limited resources for rewards are further watered down by trying to spread them around equally. The result: low- and mediocre-performers enjoy the same rewards as high-performers such as yourself! When your manager suffers from this “false fairness” syndrome, she fails to give you—her best employee—the flexibility you need to continue working hard and smart, and deprives herself of a key tool for motivating her employees. What’s truly fair is giving you the chance to earn more or less on the basis of your actual performance.

Three: They are afraid of being perceived as a “jerk” and want to be seen as “nice”

Surprisingly, what I call the “false nice-guy complex” is more widespread than you can imagine. False nice-guy managers refuse to make decisions, give orders, and hold people accountable. They tell themselves they are abdicating these responsibilities because they don’t want to be a “jerk.” The irony is that false nice guys tend to soft-pedal their authority so much that things are bound to go wrong. When they do, these bosses get frustrated and angry, and tend to act like jerks: arbitrary, out of line, loud, mean, and even abusive. Afterwards, they feel terribly guilty for behaving this way. So what do they do? They go back to soft-pedaling their authority, without ever realizing that they are caught in a vicious cycle.

Are they really being nice-guy managers by failing to provide the direction, support, and coaching that employees need in order to succeed? In truth, they are simply letting themselves off the hook to avoid the uncomfortable tension that comes with being stuck between the boardroom and the front lines—being the one who has to negotiate the competing needs and desires of the employer and the employee. They are refusing to take responsibility for their authority, which has real consequences that are anything but nice: problems arise, sometimes big ones. When problems are not dealt with, they may turn into disasters. The best way for a manager to avoid being a jerk is to accept his or her legitimate authority and feel comfortable using it. Genuine nice-guy managers do what it takes to help employees succeed so that those employees can deliver great service to customers and earn more rewards for themselves.

Yes, of course, some managers are true jerks. Here are the seven common true-jerk boss personas:

1. The boss who lets small problems slide over and over again, but then comes down like a ton of bricks when one of those problems gets out of control.

2. The boss who is compulsive or obsessive and imposes that on you.

3. The boss who doesn’t want to manage but wants a beck-and-call assistant.

4. The boss who pretends things are up to you when they are not.

5. The boss who doesn’t keep track of what’s going on but makes big decisions that affect everyone.

6. The boss who soft-pedals his authority until something goes terribly wrong, and then comes in and chews you out.

7. The boss who is intimidating, mean, or abusive.

In Chapter Nine I will go into detail with each of these personas and provide best practices for dealing with these types of true-jerk boss.

Four: They are afraid of having difficult confrontations with employees

Lots of managers find that the most painful aspect of managing is having difficult conversations, even confrontations, with employees. Such managers often avoid day-to-day conversations with employees about their work because they are trying to avoid these confrontations. But when your manager avoids talking with you about your day-to-day work, then confrontations actually become more likely. Why?

If you and your boss are not having regular conversations about your work, then neither one of you is experienced at them. If you and your boss are not talking regularly, your boss has probably not been making expectations clear. When a problem absolutely must be dealt with and he finally confronts you, both of you are more likely to be frustrated and angry. The conversation will not only come as a big unpleasant surprise to you but is more likely to become heated. There is only one way managers can avoid difficult confrontations: having lots of mundane conversations about the day-to-day work before anything goes wrong!

Five: They are afraid to break organizational rules and procedures and feel constrained by bureaucratic red tape

Managers tell me every day that despite their best efforts, they are held back by bureaucratic rules, regulations, and red tape. Many find navigating organizational procedures and legal requirements daunting. Some, in fact, have gotten into real trouble for purposely or inadvertently doing something wrong. Still more have found themselves tangled up in endless paperwork, meetings, and calls regarding a personnel issue, often with a very unsatisfying end for everybody involved.

Dealing with all the complexities of employment rules and organizational procedures can be a pain in the neck. Still, some managers hide behind this challenge as an excuse to avoid managing. Others work through the challenge every day in order to make sure the employees they manage are getting the management basics. How should your manager work within and around the rules? She should learn them backward and forward—and then work them. Performance is always the fair and legal basis for discriminating in the workplace. As long as your boss can demonstrate that any rewards or detriments to you are based solely on your work performance, there is no basis for a cla...