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What's your problem?
Q: My boss is constantly criticising the performance and work-style of senior members of the company and I am reluctant to add my agreement. (I don't agree anyway, and think he is just showing his own insecurity.) How do I avoid doing so without annoying him?
A: You seem to have avoided the biggest trap. If you'd as much as implied agreement, you'd have been sunk - forever complicit and never able to question his views.
Even so, it's terribly difficult. The only way that you can avoid the continuing need to dissemble is to get him to cut his criticisms - at least to you. And the only way you can achieve that is by putting it to him straight - or fairly straight, anyway.
Next time he starts to criticise his seniors, try saying something along these line: 'Look, Jake, I like my job and I like working with you, and I want to go on having faith in the company. So please don't tell me all this stuff about management: even if it's all true, there's nothing I can do about it and it's just going to rattle me. Hope you understand?'
You may have to say the same sort of thing a couple of times, but it should help. And with any luck, he won't take mortal offence.
In the longer term, he doesn't seem to me the sort of boss you want to go on working for.
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All Comments
Jonty Faulkner 16-May-08, 11:39
This is a scenario that unfortunately almost all of us have experienced or can relate to and is undeniably a difficult situation to be put in. I am surprised, though, by the final sentence. Whilst getting a senior colleague to change their behaviour is difficult, it is our experience at 2WayTrust that if businesses performance is brought into the equation people are more likely to take on board difficult feedbackWhat disappoints me about the advice you’re giving here is that you suggest giving up on Jake at some stage and finding a job elsewhere. Surely the problem is that HE has given up on his seniors – and that the best advice one can give is not to walk away, but to find a means of having a real discussion about what he thinks is going wrong.
It’s not just Jake’s “seniors” who are under-performing; he is as well, by not saying anything to them and instead offloading onto someone who can’t do anything about it.
Jonty Faulkner – External Relations Manager
2WayTrust
0044 (0)1822 880317
www.2waytrust.com
Howard Clark 08-Jun-09, 10:44
The problems is a common one in command and control, hierarchical, top-down organisations.Competition, control of people and criticism of individuals are symptoms of the design of structures, which in turn are created by how managers think about work.
John Seddon has written about this influentially in Systems Thinking in the Public Sector and Freedom from Command and control.
I wonder if the criticism from the senior manager is actually fueled by something else.
It might be worthwhile asking what problem your boss thinks that they are trying to solve?
They are, at the end of the day blaming poor performance on the managers.
So what performance problems? Move the focus away from individuals back towards the system.
Peter Freeth 29-Jun-09, 21:52
An organisation with around 200 employees working in the public sector asked us to develop a coaching program for their senior managers which would accelerate the implementation of their new strategy.An ambitious 10 year business plan needed strong leadership to guide an underlying culture change, shifting the focus of the business from a public sector mentality to one of business and commercial awareness. The CEO had been in place for only a short time, having been promoted rapidly from company accountant to Finance Director to CEO.
We coached the CEO to develop this strategy, and this evolved into a coaching program for the senior managers, supporting them in implementing the strategy in their own areas of the business.
From the beginning, the CEO avoided key issues during coaching and inconsistencies began to show during conversations between the CEO and the Directors. During a strategy workshop, Directors closed ranks, recited rehearsed statements about the strategy and looked to the CEO for approval.
After just two months into the coaching program, it was clear that some managers' ideas to implement the strategy were being blocked, whilst others were contradicting themselves and avoiding accountability. The CEO was continuing to avoid key issues and was making very little progress overall.
The main issue appeared to be the avoidance of accountability. Staff would avoid work that they were not interested in and their managers would take on extra work rather than make individuals accountable for their actions, so work flowed up the organisational structure rather than down and managers took on a higher workload resulting in longer working hours, greater stress, mistrust and resentment .
We called a meeting with the CEO and told her that we were closing the coaching program.
The fundamental issue was that the CEO was manipulating her managers and the board in order to support her own hidden agenda; her early exit. She knew that she did not have enough experience as a CEO to secure her next position, so the only option was a significant achievement in the form of a merger with another organisation which would give her an instant successor from outside the organisation, enabling her to block succession from within. She had already removed two Directors and had identified a third who she was setting up to fail in key performance areas. She influenced board elections to ensure support from new members and gave the impression that she was protecting her team from the board in order to control communication between them.
This complex system of control and manipulation bred mistrust, avoidance and dishonesty throughout the management team and began to create a barrier to the CEO's own hidden agenda. The business was disintegrating faster than she could orchestrate her exit, and at some point the board would take the exit decision away from her, leaving her with neither the experience nor the achievements to move forwards yet equally unable to move backwards.
At our final meeting, we told the CEO that we had identified all of this, and that we were no longer part of the game. Although she was surprised at our withdrawal from the program, she admitted to everything that we said. She recognised the risk that she faced, and the danger that she was putting the company in. If we had said nothing and continued to coach her, the coaching would have been ineffective because of her manipulation and avoidance. By admitting to her behaviour, she had taken responsibility for it and no longer needed coaching. Either way, our feedback was more valuable than any coaching ever could be.
www.askrevelation.com
www.askrevelation.com