Chapter 2
The Boss Who Pits You Against Your Colleagues
The Problem
Your boss has you competing against your peers for her respect and attention. It’s a “reindeer games” scenario—only one of you can win some coveted prize, whether it’s the chance to lead a team, get a promotion, or just have a moment in the limelight. She has created a horrible, cutthroat environment for an otherwise collegial group of direct reports.
Why It Happens
Though some bosses don’t realize they’re creating this problem, in many cases it’s a deliberate management tactic: Task several people with solving a business challenge, and make it an implicit horse race. Even when a promotion isn’t on the table, senior executives often leave roles and responsibilities ambiguous as a test. They want to see who can take the pressure, who will rise to the occasion, who wants to get ahead badly enough to throw some sharp elbows.
RETALIATION: ANDREA’S STORY
WHAT HAPPENED:
I worked in a small organization where two of us had the same title but very different jobs in practice. Our boss didn’t see a problem with the ambiguity, but it created tension. I managed a team of people. My peer didn’t manage anyone, but she had significant influence. She took every opportunity to undermine me by bad-mouthing me to my team. My direct reports would defend me, but it was rattling for them. In many cases, they’d come to me to tell me what was happening.
WHAT I DID:
I told my boss, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” I assumed he spoke to her, because for two or three months, the behavior disappeared. But then she began sending around nasty e-mails about me—sometimes “inadvertently” copying me. Here’s the really bad part: I figured out that people like that can be manipulated because they’re convinced that others are actively working against them. So it was easy to fight back. I’d say things like, “I saw the owner of the company today, and we had a really good chat.” That would freak her out. It implied that I was having some kind of exclusive conversation with the big boss. I wasn’t—but she didn’t know that. Ultimately her behavior got out of control, and she unspooled publicly. She got fired around the same time I left the company.
DID ANDREA GET IT RIGHT?
Andrea was effective, but at great cost to her colleague and herself. She allowed herself to slip down to her colleague’s level—and it didn’t make her any happier, just guiltier. She would have felt better taking a higher road, calling her colleague on the bad behavior and asking her boss to create more-distinct job titles and descriptions to clarify their responsibilities.
Abraham Lincoln famously assembled a “team of rivals.” He harnessed their competitive energy to bring out the best in each member and to produce the greatest results as a group. Bosses do the same. In some industries, such as investment banking and consulting, it’s even considered a rite of passage, observes leadership consultant Jessica Pryce-Jones. The boss thinks, “I made my way to the top through healthy competition, so why shouldn’t you?”
What to Do About It
An environment like this is frustrating for both you and your peers—and it can actually harm performance. When people focus intensely on beating one another out, they inevitably lose sight of larger goals and the greater good. Here are some ways to establish a friendlier, more collaborative dynamic—even when your boss (knowingly or not) sets the stage for conflict.
Make a pact
You and your colleagues can find your own ways of working together that don’t ratchet up the competition. Leadership consultant Kathryn Heath figured this out early in her career, when an indifferent boss unwittingly set up a rivalry between Heath and a coworker. “We were in two different areas,” Heath recalls, “but we needed to work together. Our boss didn’t make roles and decision rights clear for us, so we had to sort them out ourselves.” The colleague wanted to take the lead, just tapping Heath for whatever support he needed. But Heath didn’t intend to play a supporting role. In fact, her colleague relied on resources she controlled.
Rather than engage in passive-aggressive games, Heath decided to have a straightforward discussion with him about how they could work together on a level field. “It was a tough conversation,” she recalls, “because we were held accountable for different things.” They tried to keep emotion out of it by focusing on coming to an understanding that would benefit both of their teams. “We came up with a detailed plan for how we’d handle certain situations. And we agreed to not make any big commitments or moves without talking to each other first.” It wasn’t a perfect solution, but by dealing with the issue directly, they diffused what could have been an incendiary relationship.
Establish ground rules, advises Susan Heathfield, an organizational development and HR expert. What if your colleague is playing dirty—by one-upping you in meetings, for example, or leaving you out of the loop so that you’ll look clueless? Describe exactly what you see him doing, and ask him to stop. You may not feel comfortable confronting him, but work up the courage to do it. He’ll be more likely to play fair in the future because he probably doesn’t enjoy confrontation any more than you do. “He usually gets away with his behavior,” says Heathfield, “so it’s key to call him on it. If you allow it to continue unchecked, that trains him to do it more often—or to more of an extreme.”
Call a time-out
You don’t have to duke it out just because your boss has thrown you and a colleague in the ring. You can refuse to fight. Mary Davis Holt, one of Heath’s partners, learned this in a past job—but not as soon as she’d have liked. Her boss had put her on a project with someone without making clear assignments, and it created conflict. Though Holt and her colleague had sat down in the beginning to sort out who would do what, over time she realized that she had allowed herself to do 80% of the work while her colleague was happy to claim credit for leading the effort.
“I probably should have recognized the imbalance earlier,” she says. “But I was so eager for the next promotion, I wanted to show my willingness to go with the flow and be a flexible team player.” The more she put up with, the more she saw her colleague as an adversary. In hindsight, what does she wish she’d done? Though she’s glad she didn’t let her anger erupt into a nasty fight over division of labor, she says, “I should have asked my boss to clarify our respective responsibilities right away.” Once she spoke up and her boss realized what he’d set in motion, he agreed to step in to better divide the tasks.
Manage up
Tell your boss how you feel about the situation, but be diplomatic and constructive. If she thinks you’re grousing, she won’t take your concerns seriously. Or she might conclude that you have difficulty getting along with others (see chapter 4, “The Boss’s Pet”). Discuss it with your colleague first, advises Heathfield—and then meet with your boss, perhaps together. Say you’d both like to stop vying for the spotlight because it’s distracting you from doing your best work. Ask if she can avoid putting you in competitive situations (and give a few examples, in case she’s not tuned in to the competition) so that you can both be more productive—to the benefit of all.
Some bosses think fostering internal competition helps them identify the truly talented, “like some kind of Darwinian gauntlet,” says Pryce-Jones. She recently advised a junior investment banker who faced that problem. His boss tried to pit him directly against another colleague: Whoever had recommended the best-performing investments by the end of six months would be the “winner.” The prize? The boss’s favor—and job security. So the fledgling banker approached his boss with a different idea: Could he and his colleague work together to come up with the best picks? He identified reasons that would be better for the company, citing research about the benefits of collaboration. The boss agreed to try the experiment, and he’s been pleased with the results. In Pryce-Jones’s experience, this example isn’t an outlier. “Most bosses are open to trying a different tack,” she says. “Especially when you say, ‘Here’s how you could get more out of me.’”