Chapter 21
Working With Peers, Subordinates, and Bosses
In This Chapter
• Working effectively with others is everything
• Fair and square managers finish first
• Become a delegation sensation
• The care and feeding of bosses
Having to work with peers, subordinates, and bosses can be as challenging in getting things done as any other situation in which you may find yourself. Because you may have little leeway as to with whom you work, in this chapter we’ll have a look at what it takes to function effectively with others. Let’s start with the scenario that you’re the new kid on the block.
The New Guy or Gal
When you’re hired for a new position, specifically one where you supervise others, you are given an unofficial 100-day window of opportunity. During this time, which stretches for 4 to 5 months, you can plead ignorance on key issues, ask questions that you wouldn’t dare to ask if you had been with the company for years, and generally expect to receive gracious treatment!
This 100-day grace period represents the best time to achieve some early wins. In seeking to get things done, concentrate on projects that represent sorely needed improvements that others would like to see resolved. Establish a clear vision of what you want to get done and let others in on your plan.
Take advantage of this one-time window of opportunity to set the tone and you may achieve an operating advantage in the months and years to follow.
Supervise Successfully, Lead to Succeed
In many ways, your effectiveness on the job, new or old, is largely defined by how adept you are at working with others. Above all, the key element to working with peers, subordinates, and bosses, has to be interpersonal skills. If you have the ability to communicate effectively, offer clear and precise directions, elicit feedback, and listen well, you’re going to go to the head of the class when it comes to managerial effectiveness.
Dyna Moe
The effective manager seeks to achieve powerful results, while recognizing that sometimes, if not often, progress is uneven, endures twists and turns, starts and stops, and reformulations and reconfigurations.
Now is a good time to recall an observation made in Chapter 2 about effective managers. This is the person who is keenly focused on how his staff proceeds throughout the day and how well they harness ideas and insights, knowledge and wisdom, and energy and enthusiasm to accomplish the tasks at hand.
Throughout business and industry, workers everywhere hunger for leadership. In today’s business world, CEOs and top executives come and go, some days scandal seems to be the norm, and people are likely to pass the buck as quickly as they receive it. The manager or supervisor who is willing to step up to the plate and take a vested interest in the division, department team, or staff, and the well-being of each participant, while staying focused on the work to be done, can actually win over hearts and minds.
While scads of books and articles have been written on being an effective manager, supervisor, or staff worker, paying homage to the traits and characteristics in the following sections will serve you well.
The Few, the Proud, the Three
The Marine Corps has long used a method of command called the “Rule of Three.” A corporal is in charge of managing three privates. A sergeant manages three corporals. A lieutenant manages three sergeants and so on. The underlying concept is that each officer in the chain of command needs to stay focused on three other people.
The workaday world operates, obviously, quite differently. Still, there is a management lesson or two we could learn from the Marines about staying focused and not over-reaching. On this day, what if you focused on the three most significant tasks or projects confronting you? What if you completely focused your attention and poured your concentrated effort into making progress on the first of these tasks?
If you’re managing others, what if you were able to clearly and precisely direct your troops so that they were ably prepared to tackle the task at hand? In our quest to get so many things done, too often we fritter our attention in too many different directions. If we’re managing others, we might convey this sense of frenzy to them.
By limiting the scope of what we wish to achieve in any given unit of time, such as an eight-hour workday, we give ourselves a strategic operating advantage that we are rarely able to enjoy. Or, if we manage others, we enable them to have a greater degree of focus and clarity that perhaps they sorely desire but have heretofore never articulated.
Being Fair and Consistent with All
Clearly, the people with whom you work are not alike in terms of their skills and background, competence and dedication, or even outlook and enthusiasm. It’s easy to play favorites. Who wouldn’t be more likely to act favorably toward consistent performers, or those with a winning personality, or simply those whom you seem to get along with easily?
Being unfair or inconsistent with even one other staff person has ramifications that can undermine your effectiveness as a manager. People see and hear and know when someone else in your department is being treated unfairly. If it can happen to one person, then why not again and again? What’s more challenging and mandatory is to be fair and consistent with everyone.
Dyna Moe
Your quest is to fight for objectivity in dealing with staff so that your emotions don’t take over.
When someone with whom you’re not necessarily favorably disposed messes up in some way, can you approach the situation in the same way you would if one of your favorite people messed up in exactly the same way? Can you give equal time, equal attention, and equal caring to each staff member? If you can, be prepared for the pleasant experience of working with a staff that, overall, may prove to be a bit more productive than you would have supposed.
Use Language Accepted by All
Have you ever worked for someone who tossed about corporate buzz words or terminology that he or she apparently didn’t believe in, but was trying to foist upon you? You know, the type of person who would win a Razzy for bad acting? Who wants to work around people like that? It makes you feel like they are insincere and fake.
If you’re supervising younger staff, you don’t necessarily need to know all of their lingo. Indeed, you’ll come across as a poser if you attempt to talk their talk while not truly being in their world. Nevertheless, forsaking the platitudes and pat phrases can work wonders. You don’t need to enroll in “Communication 101,” simply be yourself, keep it real, and speak to a staff person as you would a good friend.
You wouldn’t use jargon with a friend, would you? You wouldn’t submit your friends to organizational psychobabble would you? Then don’t do it among your charges. Be real with the people with whom you work or supervise. Use terminology or phrases to which they can relate.
Your Words, Your Actions
For reasons that probably only cultural anthropologists can describe, people tend to get more upset about promises that were made to them and broken than almost anything else that transpires between individuals.
If you say it, mean it. If you promise it, work like a trucker on a deadline to ensure you deliver. If you can’t make good on your progress, explain why and explain what you will do to rectify the situation, either this time or next time. Then, make sure as heck that you deliver on the next promise, because the people with whom you work, and especially whom you manage or supervise, will more often and more easily recall the promises you’ve made than you will. So, write them down.
Delivering on your promises is an effective way to ensure that your staff delivers the type of performance you seek. After all, if they’re rewarded accordingly, time after time, then they know that you’ll deliver.
At all costs avoid offering a continuing promise. That means that you delay that which you said you would. Worse, you might up the ante, suggesting that ultimately the reward will be even bigger than you first introduced, and that can backfire on you as well. Keep things simple, keep things above board, and keep your word. When in doubt, tell the truth, accept responsibility, and be a stand-up kind of manager.
Factoid
Remember the Tylenol scare, in which several people died because someone had poisoned a few bottles? As soon as it became apparent that the deaths were due to poisoned Tylenol, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the distributor of Tylenol for Johnson & Johnson leapt into action with a full-disclosure public relations campaign. McNeil Consumer Healthcare’s campaign candidly revealed the entire situation related to the Tylenol scare of the 1980s with little or no spin on the facts and not a trace of defensiveness. This unorthodox approach maintained the public trust during the company’s darkest hour. The result? McNeil became the leading manufacturer of over-the-counter cold medicines in the United States. Its public relations campaign is still being studied in business schools as a perfect example of being straight with people.
Instill a Grouplike Atmosphere
We’ll cover the issue of assembling a winning team in Chapter 24. Here, focusing on working with an intact team, what can you do to ensure that each member of the team feels that he or she plays a vital part? Whenever possible and practical, involve the team in decision making. Get everyone involved in the discussion. Depending on the issue at hand, encourage a wide variety of ideas in brainstorming sessions.
When you include people in this manner, they have a more vested interest in ensuring that the task or project is completed on time and within the budget. If decisions are always made by you, you and only you, that can work in the short term, but after a while it can be kind of grating. People feel stifled; they want to be able to express themselves and they want to know that their ideas matter.
Dyna Moe
When you include the group in the decision-making process, you also generate new ideas that you may never have come across by yourself.
Successful corporations continue to pay employee bonuses for ideas put into the proverbial “suggestion box” because these organizations recognize the value and power of fresh perspectives, innovative ideas, and cost-saving solutions. Not everyone has a great idea all the time, but it only takes a few ideas here and there that squarely hit the mark to realize that soliciting feedback from knowledgeable others makes great sense.
When it’s obvious that the path described or solution proposed by one of your staff offers great potential, you may need the mental and emotional fortitude to proceed in a new direction. But hey, effective leaders produce results and your role is not one of manipulation; it is one of increasing participation and cooperation, while offering guidance.
Provide Challenges
Working with others would be a piece of cake if the only tasks you ever requested of them were simple to tackle, easy to complete, and well within their capabilities. In today’s workplace, this is a fairy tale. Increasingly, you may find yourself having to make what seems to be an unreasonable request. The individual(s) assigned such a task may, at first, squawk. Anticipating such resistance will serve you well.
Your role is to offer staff guidance on how to get started, generate momentum, avoid pitfalls, and proceed to completion. The more challenging the task, the more often you likely need to stay in touch. In the early stages of the project, you may be putting in ten “units” of energy for every one “unit” of output you receive. That’s okay. You and your staff are in a concentration mode.
Later, as the project gets rolling, you may be putting in ten units and receiving a commensurate return. Ideally, when the project is humming along, one unit of energy then offers ten units of output. Now you’ve achieved momentum! And when the people you supervise experience the exquisite experience of momentum, your odds of succeeding on the next challenging project increase markedly.
Secrets of Effective Delegators
For most of your career, you’ve read or heard that one of the key approaches to getting things done is to delegate effectively. This presumes that you have others to whom you can delegate. In my work with more than 750 organizations over the last two decades, I’ve found increasingly that people have fewer resources, a lower budget, and fewer staff people. If they want to get something done, often they have to do it themselves!
Assuming you have others to whom you can delegate, the first or second time you personally tackle a particular task yields valuable information. You learn more about the nature of the task, perhaps how long it takes, whether you enjoy doing it or not, and so on. By the third time, a task of the same ilk as those you’ve handled before often becomes best handled by someone reporting to you. Such tasks could involve entering names into a database, completing an interim report, or assembling meeting notes.
On the path to getting things done, your quest is to identify all those things that you can possibly delegate to others and then prepare those others so that they have a high probability of succeeding.
Many managers and supervisors fail to delegate effectively because either they don’t fully trust the people with whom they’re working, or they’ve always been get-it-all-done-by-myself types. Some managers feel they have to take care of everything themselves and to this day haven’t been able to break the habit of “doing it all.” If this someone is in your seat right now, recognize once and for all that as a category of one, you must realize that you can only get so much done.
Dyna Moe
In the course of your workday there may be only a handful of things that you and you alone need to do because of your experience, insight, or specialized knowledge. Everything else that can be delegated should be delegated.
Media mogul and influential editor H. L. Mencken once said, “For it is mutual trust, more than it is mutual interest, that holds human associations together.” If you want to rise in your career, to assume increasing responsibility, or if you look forward to raises and all that good stuff, you’re going to have to master the art of delegating at one time or another and trust that others can do the job. It might as well be now.
Delegation Starting from Zero
Sometimes your delegating task poses no mystery. It’s part of your job description. Or, based on the type of organization where you work and the job roles assumed by you and your staff, areas for delegation are obvious. Short of all that, here are some general guidelines for being an effective delegator.
Prior to delegating anything to anyone, take the time to actually prepare your staff for delegation. This would involve assessing an employee’s skills, interests, and needs. You could even ask people what new tasks and responsibilities they would like to assume. You might be surprised at the wide variety of responses you receive.
While you want to delegate to staff people who show enthusiasm, initiative, and interest, or have otherwise previously demonstrated the ability to handle and balance several tasks at once, sometimes you have to delegate to someone who has not exhibited any of the above. In that case, delegate on a piecemeal basis. Ensure that the staff person is able to effectively handle the small task or tasks he’s been assigned and does not feel swamped or overloaded. When the staff person demonstrates competence, you can increase the complexity of assignments and even the frequency with which you delegate.
Dyna Moe
There may be people on your staff right now who can help you with tasks you’ve been dying to hand off to someone but didn’t see how or when you could put them into play.
Walk Through It
The first time you delegate anything to anyone, painstakingly walk them through exactly what you want them to achieve. Paint a vivid portrait of what things will look like once the task or project is completed. You may have some instructions to provide or training to offer, but otherwise don’t necessarily be concerned with how the staff person will proceed. He or she may have a notion or two completely out of your realm that prove to be suitable and even appropriate for the task.
Match up the tasks you wish to delegate with those staff people who have the requisite skills and background. However, don’t be afraid to assign someone a task that represents a stretch. This is the way people learn and grow, and is a method for developing an increasingly competent staff.
Look to empower that person by offering guidance at critical junctures. Be available as much as practical, although be careful not to encourage an environment of constant interruptions in which you cannot get anything done. If it helps, plot regular intervals at which time you two will get together to compare notes. Monitor project progress, offer additional guidance, and continue on.
As staff members begin to demonstrate their capabilities on the projects you’ve delegated, give them even more slack in terms of how they’ll approach and complete the assignments. Forsake any over-controlling predisposition. Ideally, you’ve delegated enough authority for your staff to successfully complete the tasks by allowing them to make their own decisions and take initiative. You know you’ve delegated effectively when they’re able to operate even in your absence.
Your Toughest Customer: Your Boss
Unless you run your own organization, undoubtedly you report to someone else, a boss. Your boss is your toughest customer, the person whom you have to impress day in and day out. For however long it lasts, your career is linked to this individual regardless of his or her level of competence, personality type, or daily disposition.
Fortunately, your boss is human, just as you are. That being the case, it’s possible to diagnose your boss to determine how he or she operates and expects others to operate, what makes their day and what ruins their day. This clearly is not rocket science.
Make Your Boss Look Good
In observing and understanding your boss, you’re drawing upon the same skills that you’ve tapped your whole life. You’ve done this with your parents, your friends, lovers, teachers, professors, co-workers, and everyone in between.
As cited in Chapter 3, practice Mark McCormack’s notion of “aggressive observation.” Specifically, you “read” others by paying attention to their needs. Anyone can do it and hence get better at working with others. Without even knowing your boss, I’ll bet the farm that he seeks praise for the work he does. Yet how often do you praise your boss? If your boss has been extra supportive of you, tell him or her you appreciate it. And make sure to be honest in your praise … sycophants can be easily spotted.
Dyna Moe
A great way to make your boss look good is no secret at all—handle your work efficiently and effectively.
Offer Solutions
Regardless of your boss’s operating style, take it as a given that he or she will be most appreciative when you are able to both succinctly identify a problem and have some viable solutions to that problem in mind.
By having solutions ready to propose, you avoid a classic dilemma faced by too many otherwise competent staff people. They are bright, alert, and ever eager to point out ways in which the company might be losing customers, market share, revenue, and so on. However, if they don’t have solutions in mind, they are simply sirens ever-sounding warnings—which do have value—but which mark the individual as rather one-dimensional.
By having solutions in mind, you do both your boss and yourself a huge favor. Your boss has lots of other issues to handle and is grateful to have some ideas about addressing a problem that, practically speaking, was not likely in her mind moments before. Concurrently, your solution-oriented style conveys the message that you have solid promotion potential. You demonstrate that you are thinking ahead, going the extra mile, and considering what’s best for all.
What If Your Boss Is a Career Roadblock?
What if your boss is a terrible taskmaster, a tyrant of the office, insensitive to individual needs, or merely callous? There are ways to turn a bleak situation to your advantage.
Working for a boss whom you don’t like may strengthen your ability to deal with people—including good and bad future bosses—and it may help you hone your diplomatic skills as well. If you can peacefully coexist with people whom you don’t like or respect, your chances of successfully dealing with all others will improve.
When your supervisor is an incompetent boss who lacks creativity and has trouble making decisions, turn the situation to your advantage by taking on more responsibilities.
Dyna Moe
Keep doing a good job and uphold the name of your organization. Be professional and take your experiences in stride. Learn and benefit from them, but don’t waste energy resurrecting the past.
Perhaps you’re working for an insensitive boss who, intentionally or otherwise, bawls you out for minor mistakes or takes credit for your achievements while neglecting to praise your efforts. It might seem like nothing positive can come from this experience, but don’t despair. You’re learning one of the most valuable of business lessons—“don’t take it personally.” Nothing stops a career achiever in his tracks faster than the tendency to take every callous remark or each instance of a lack of recognition as a personal affront. Don’t dwell on these things, move on.
You’re not the only one who notices if your manager’s behavior is volatile. Your ability to stay cool and perform well, contrasted with your boss’s temper tantrums, may eventually win you kudos from colleagues and from top management. Sometimes you can learn as much from a negative example as from a positive one. Instead of wasting mental energy on the things your boss is doing wrong, contemplate how they could be done right in the future.
The Least You Need to Know
• Your effectiveness on the job, new or old, will be largely defined by how adept you are at working with others.
• Be real with the people with whom you work or supervise and use terminology to which they can relate.
• Whenever possible and practical, involve the team in decision making.
• Identify all those things that you can possibly delegate to others and then prepare those others so that they have a high probability of succeeding.
• In observing and understanding your boss, simply draw upon the same skills that you’ve tapped your whole life.
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