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Be a Conscience for Your Boss

It is no surprise that the boss cannot be everywhere at work, whether it’s at one moment in time or all the time. It therefore helps if the boss has the eyes and ears of others to depend on. Not to serve as spies or alarms but to be trusted agents who can honestly and reliably measure the good and the bad in and around the workplace for the boss.

That can range from determining attitudes of employees to measuring the quality of the work being done. It can also mean sensing when something is broken or wrong.

You may never be asked to be a lookout for or a gauge of things happening. Yet if you are in a position of responsibility within an organization, it’s not only okay to be a conscience, it’s almost a duty.

That doesn’t have to be every day. That doesn’t have to be in every way. But it should be whenever you can or wherever you go to see, listen, and learn on behalf of the boss.

I put this in the category of passionate curiosity, wanting to take the pulse of the organization for the good of the organization. It’s about having mental inquisitiveness about the people who work here, the facility in which we work, the infrastructure that holds that facility together, the technology we use, the products we build, the services we provide, and the profits we make.

It may be as innocent as going to the cafeteria for lunch. Sitting with friends is fine. Sitting with a stranger can be even finer. I’ve known senior leaders who think going to the cafeteria to be seen is cool. They are seen by the unwashed masses to be sure, but when they bring with them their staff with whom they sit and talk, it is far from impressive.

As chief of staff of the State Department, I would routinely wander about the Main State Building to meet and talk with members of the staff. Some appeared shocked; they’d never met a chief of staff. Others expressed delight at having the ear of someone who was willing to listen. Much of that type of exchange went back to the secretary of state in the form of informational feedback. As the boss, he deserved to know what people in the department thought and how they felt.

Friends will tell you what you already know; strangers will tell you things you otherwise wouldn’t know. Engage strangers in conversation. Ask who they are. Ask what they do. Ask how they do it. Even ask how they like what they do. The answers might surprise you.

Visit the product manufacturing or assembly line. Watch people and things in motion. Check their movements, watch their expressions, observe what they say and do on breaks. Introduce yourself and enter into a conversation with these important employees.

By going to the watercooler, you can meet new people. You can listen in on what people are saying. Much of the time it’s about balls—footballs, basketballs, or baseballs, depending on the season. Other times, it’s about what they do, who they do it for, and whether they enjoy the experience.

Whatever you learn, it is likely to be something to share with the boss, good or bad. He or she should want to know what’s happening elsewhere in the company; the boss may even ask what you learned. Your bosses can use what you say as a barometer to measure what’s going on out there that they don’t normally see for themselves in the workplace.

By frequenting the various places and by engaging people in conversation, not only will you learn what’s happening at that moment, you’re likely to establish a contact or foster a relationship that can continue over time. Those new friends and acquaintances can become repeat sources of information, good or bad. If they come to know and trust you, those people will even confide in you things that they know but that you’d probably never know without them.

Who knows? A mentoring relationship might even develop. By virtue of your position, which is close to the boss, certainly closer than those of the persons with whom you’re talking, they may feel you are perfectly positioned to hear them out or help them out.

Although traditional long-term mentoring relationships should be part of what you do as a leader over time with people who come to rely on you, situational mentoring is important too. Connecting with people with whom you come into contact momentarily or situationally allows you to interact for a certain period that may be as short as the lunch hour or longer when you see them the next time or over the course of time.

By virtue of this unempirical type of research, if you become aware of a problem and are in a position of responsibility, try to fix it yourself. If it’s too big or too hot to handle, take it up the line. If you are high enough up that chain, you may be the one who takes the problem directly to the boss.

If you are ever the one who conveys bad tidings to the boss, come armed with a proposed solution. No boss wants to hear that something is wrong without hearing how to fix it.

Literally, the definition of conscience is “the faculty of recognizing the difference between right and wrong.” This implies that you should be acting accordingly to do something about the matter one way or another. For any organization and for any boss, that is a valuable capability to have. For people in positions of responsibility, that is an important and crucial role to fulfill.