Chapter 1
The Boss Who Holds You Back
The Problem
You’ve been quietly showing your boss the ropes for a long time. He relies on you heavily for help with everything from interpreting monthly reports to sizing up market demand to placating cranky stakeholders. Yet only his name appears on the e-mails that update higher-ups on your projects. You feel like the stagehand behind the curtain—you’re running the show, but he’s the one out front, taking a prolonged bow.
Why It Happens
When the person who should be your organizational guide and cheerleader keeps your smart contributions under wraps, of course you don’t feel valued. Even if he’s not intentionally undermining you or holding you back, it’s hard to stay motivated—after all, you know your efforts will go unrecognized.
Some bosses simply don’t like sharing the spotlight. Others get nervous when their shortcomings are thrown into sharp relief by a direct report’s strengths. You may run into this problem with a boss who is new to his job, for example, and feels threatened by your deep organizational knowledge and close internal ties. Or perhaps your manager inherited you in a merger or a reorg and has discovered that you bring critical new skills to his team—skills everyone assumed he already had.
What to Do About It
You may fantasize about changing jobs, but you probably won’t have to resort to that. You can improve your day-to-day relationship with your manager—but you’ll need to lead the transformation.
Own the problem
Jessica Pryce-Jones, CEO of the UK-based leadership consultancy iOpener and author of Happiness at Work, says people are often too quick to dub a work relationship a failure before taking their share of responsibility for fixing it.
How can you do your part? Remember that your boss wants to succeed in his job as much as you do in yours. That will help you adopt a constructive mind-set so that you can move beyond your frustration and improve the dynamic. Think about what you share with your boss rather than what divides you: If you have only “transactional” conversations, Pryce-Jones says, you’re unlikely to warm to each other. But looking for personal similarities will make it easier for you to connect professionally. Did you grow up in the same area? Do you admire the same people?
Finding common ground will help you interpret events and interactions more positively. Are there reasonable explanations for what you perceive as negative signals? Maybe your boss appears to be shutting you out of critical meetings with his boss, for instance—but it’s really because one-on-ones feel more efficient to him, not because he wants to keep you from growing and advancing.
BRANCHING OUT: ALEXY’S STORY
WHAT HAPPENED:
I had a “dive-bomb” manager. He’d disappear for weeks with very little contact, until he got wind of some project I was involved in. Then he would swoop in and demand reports, details, every scrap of information he could get. These urgent requests came in the form of rat-a-tat e-mails arriving at 10 pm or later. Often he’d take my responses to board meetings, passing off the work as his own. Then he’d lecture me on the need to keep him in the loop.
WHAT I DID:
I tried to keep my boss informed, but he’d ignore my updates and still somehow be taken by surprise. So I found myself pointing him to e-mails or memos I’d sent weeks earlier, which just annoyed him. I started to feel cut off from the rest of the organization, so I reached out to managers above him, asking if I could help with their cross-functional initiatives. That way, when he came back and demanded to know what was going on, I could say, “So-and-so signed off,” and he’d have to drop it. I also began to let people know what ideas and contributions were mine because he was taking credit for everything. I copied key people on my e-mail updates to him, spoke up more in meetings, made casual comments that showed my depth of knowledge, and attached my name to documents I created for him.
DID ALEXY GET IT RIGHT?
It’s hard to strike a healthy balance with an alternately indifferent and needy boss who shuts you off from others. Alexy was smart to put his name on his contributions and form alliances with other senior managers—otherwise, he’d have remained isolated and resentful—but it probably wasn’t the best idea to go behind his paranoid boss’s back (or over his head). That just fed the perception that he couldn’t be trusted with independence and visibility.
Once you’re open to his point of view, you can begin treating him as you’d like to be treated: Find genuine opportunities to make him look good. “Tell someone he respects—perhaps one of his peers—about an insight he shared with you or something he accomplished that you admired,” Pryce-Jones suggests. And express your appreciation after he helps you meet an important goal or solve a tough problem. You don’t need to be effusive. Just sincerely acknowledge what he’s done for you. At the very least, you’ll lower his defenses. Best case, you’ll set a gracious example that he wants to follow.
Tap his former direct reports
If you can easily get in touch with someone who used to work for your boss, invite her out for coffee. (You may already know someone who managed the relationship effectively if you’ve been in the organization for a while. Otherwise, you might need to rely on friends to discreetly point you in the right direction.) Explain that you’re eager to develop in your role and that you’d like to pick her brain about her experience working with and learning from your boss. Pitch it as a tutorial for you, not as a gripe session: See if she can share insights about his mentoring style, for example, and tips on how to earn his trust so that he’ll feel comfortable giving you stretch assignments and placing you on cross-functional teams. Even if you feel safe confiding in this person, assume that anything you say could make its way back to your boss and edit yourself accordingly.
If the former report has only bad news for you—your boss really is a jerk—at least you’re forewarned. You know it’s not personal to you and that someone else understands what you’re going through if you need a sympathetic ear.
Katie, a research scientist (names and details are disguised in examples throughout this guide), suffered for several years under a supervisor who treated her with contempt. Katie had been recruited into her plum position by her boss’s boss, so she assumed that her boss resented her for that reason. Not wanting to make waves, she kept quiet and tried to do a good job. But then a chance conversation with one of his former direct reports led her to realize that the guy didn’t hate her—he was generally a bad manager and grumpy guy. That gave Katie the courage to stand up to him in one-on-one meetings. “It was so helpful to realize that it wasn’t just me,” Katie recalls. “I stopped taking it personally and started thinking about how to get him to back off instead.”
Network with his peers
Make sure your manager’s peers know how hard you work and how much you care about the company. If your boss isn’t giving you opportunities to demonstrate that to others, you’ll need to do it by slowly building your own relationships with people in a position of influence, says INSEAD leadership professor Herminia Ibarra. Start by getting to know a couple of people outside your immediate group (see chapter 16, “Forging Alliances”). The relationships can be casual—based initially on chitchat about movies or hobbies—or you can ask for formal introductions. Do a six-degrees-of-separation exercise if you can’t think of an easy way to connect: Who in my circle can introduce me to this person?
One ally isn’t enough, even if it’s someone with lots of power. No matter how well placed that person is, your boss can damage your reputation with others in the company if you’ve got no one else in the senior ranks looking out for you.
Paula learned this the hard way. She emerged from a massive corporate reshuffle with her job intact and a new manager, Liz. Though Liz needed her expertise to get up and running, things between them quickly got rocky since Paula clearly had the CEO’s ear. When the CEO asked Paula to handle a project for him on her own, Liz went into attack mode—criticizing her in public meetings, finding fault with her data. Paula saw the CEO’s support as guaranteed job security, so she continued to work around Liz at his behest. But over time, Liz chipped away at her reputation—and the CEO’s confidence in Paula eroded. She was eventually fired from the company.
Had Paula forged ties with a few influential people a level or two up, says leadership consultant Ron Ashkenas, she would have been less vulnerable to Liz’s steady campaign against her.
Confront him
If you haven’t managed to subtly change the dynamic with your boss, it might be time to speak openly with him about the problem. It’s a risky move, but it could be your last, best chance to fix the situation, says Ashkenas. Don’t have this conversation if you aren’t prepared to switch jobs; it could backfire if your boss really does have it in for you. But in a case like that, you wouldn’t want to stick around anyway.
Approach your boss in the most constructive way possible. Let him know that you’re on his side. Say you want to find better ways to support him. No good will come of sulking with your arms folded or ranting about how unappreciated you are. Even if that’s true, your boss won’t respond calmly to that—he’ll get defensive.
After you’ve set a positive tone by putting his needs front and center, make it clear that you’re looking to grow, too. Explain that you’re hoping to do that within the organization—ideally with his guidance. But say you’ll also consider outside opportunities after a certain amount of time has passed (offer a reasonable time frame—maybe a year). To give him something concrete to work with, describe your big-picture professional goals and how you envision getting there. Suppose, for instance, you’re eager to build your analytical skills: Volunteer to take on assignments that will require you to gather and interpret data. For example, you might comb through customer renewal rates to see if there are any patterns worth discussing. Ask your boss if he has other suggestions for developing those skills in your current role or if he’d recommend ways to get other senior managers in the company to see you in a new, high-potential light.
Of course, once your cards are on the table, be prepared for things not to go your way. But at least you’ll have given yourself and your boss every opportunity to right the course.