Everybody's got their insecurities, but when your boss is
insecure, his insecurities rule the day and your career
prospects, too. You'll never know what to expect of him,
rest assured, his actions are chosen to make him feel
better, even at your expense. Jeanne Sahadi of CNNMoney.com
says that, in the best of cases, you learn to contort your
actions to soothe the boss's quivering sense of self. In
the worst case you are perceived as a threat, and you are
fired. Your abilities, popularity, and communication skills
can surprisingly drive your boss up the tree. He will
schedule his meeting around your travel schedule, take
credit for your work, and eventually convince his boss to
get rid of you, even though you are a top performer. He
will try to throw you under the bus at every turn. He will
try to make you unsuccessful by impossible assignments and
take credit for your earlier accomplishments. Driven by
fear, envy, and self doubt, a boss's insecurities can be
manifested by:
Micromanaging - They turn to perfectionism, meddling, and
clogging up the work flow;
Indecisiveness - They may hesitate to remove poor
performers and drag down good workers;
Hide and seek - He avoids giving the team a sense of
purpose and hides in his office;
No direction - Prior instructions are reversed with chaotic
consequences;
Overcompensating - The insecure resort to bullying,
arrogance, and power games.
On the positive side - Since you can't choose your bosses,
chances are that you will have one or two insecure cases in
your career. As a rule, don't take credit for his
accomplishments, and never make the boss look stupid. Don't
take his screaming personally [easy to say]. Acknowledge
his accomplishments; we all have our good days. Let him
know that you like your job, and you want to know how to do
a better job for him.
If you are an insecure manager, think again before you gut
the organization of top performers. Eventually you will
lose, and you will have to face the consequences. The stuff
you let fly in your department will come back to haunt you.
If you are on the top rungs of the ladder, you can do
yourself a favor by removing the insecure types, who will
ruin your company if you let them. Better to listen to the
opposition and know the real situation facing the company
rather than letting all the good people leave the company
and go to the competition.
Managing Smart People - Everyone has talents, some much
more than others. They have their good points, and they
have their weak points. Your challenge is to choose people
that not only show some accomplishment in the past but an
ability to adapt to new challenges in the future. A person
who has scored well in new unrelated assignments in the
past shows this adaptability. Your job is to make stars out
of people with potential. Those who can't meet this
criterion need to be sidetracked.
It's good for your reputation to be seen as helping new
stars rise. You will win acclaim for this accomplishment.
If there is any ambiguity of who takes the credit, yield to
your talented crew. Ask them what they need to accomplish
their mission. This is in the best sense of empowerment,
and it delivers a strong message of respect. It causes your
people to step up and fully invest themselves in the job.
This is not for the insecure manager. He may start off OK,
but when anything about them comes into question, they get
defensive, retreat back into their authority, and end all
discussions. It's a form of denial; managers need to accept
feedback on how the mission is going.
The secure manager will inquire how an employee wants to be
managed. At this point the manager just listens and keeps
quiet. This procedure applies to reorganization, taking
over a new team, and other turning points. The more
assertive employee may initiate discussion on something you
never thought about, and it can dramatically improve your
abilities to manage. Your people will give you better
feedback on management than your boss. It enhances your
role of bringing out the best of your people to doing their
best work.
Respect your people's talents that you do not have. Brief
outside consultation can shed light on how to enhance the
strengths of your organization:
- Acknowledge that you have weaknesses;
- Admit that your shortcoming can hurt the product or
website and the team itself;
- Get help hiring experts for roles you are not familiar
with, and go out of your way to involve them in the
decision making process.
- Deliberately hire first rate strong willed persons to
represent specialties that you may tend to undervalue;
- Force yourself to be on top of the game, and make sure it
is not bias that drives you, but good judgment refined by
divergent perspectives.
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For more management and leadership articles, please visit
http://www.CrassCaptain.com . Find Christine-Casey-Cooper's
new book, entitled The Crass Captain's Guide to
Organizational Dysfunction, on Amazon soon.
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