Help Your Boss Help You by Ken Kousen

Author:Ken Kousen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf

Managers Who Refuse to Learn

You may be thinking, “I pushed back and tried to negotiate, but what if my manager doesn’t fix the problem? What if they won’t apologize, or even acknowledge they did anything wrong?”

That doesn’t matter, at least as far as the process is concerned. You go back to work. You pushed back and made your case, but then you went back to doing your job to the best of your ability. That’s critical, because it demonstrates that you can object, and even have a serious disagreement with the boss, without having to leave. When the boss doesn’t give you a good result and you continue to do your job, you demonstrate to your boss that even though you’re not happy, you understand your responsibilities to them and the company. It’s a dose of perspective, and actually makes resolving conflicts easier.

What if, even after your objections, the manager does something against you again? The TFT solution says you push back again, negotiate, and then go back to work once more. That can be frustrating, but at least you get to preserve your own sense of self-respect by making the objection. Not only that, by standing up for yourself, you are demonstrating that your concerns are valid and you’re doing your best to help yourself. Even with uncooperative managers, you can take some comfort in that. Of course, the long-term hope is that your manager will recognize what is going on and change their behavior.

One of the key aspects of the TFT strategy is that it’s easy to diagnose. You may not feel like you’re getting anywhere with any individual objection, but you are training your manager over time. Most managers don’t like conflict, especially with productive employees. Eventually they’ll either learn to take your reactions into account, or they won’t. How long to wait depends on the situation, the incentives, you and your manager’s tolerance for conflict, and how badly your manager needs you. Pushing back each time, however, makes your voice heard and even anticipated. It’s certainly better than doing nothing, and if you eventually feel that you have to leave, the manager shouldn’t be surprised.

That’s important. If you do eventually decide you’ve had enough and it’s time to leave, the decision should not come as a surprise to your manager. They should know that you were repeatedly unhappy and that they had multiple opportunities to correct the problems. You never want to hear, “If you were so unhappy, why didn’t you say something?” from the manager. Assuming it’s an honest statement, that means the situation might have been addressed, but the opportunity to do so was missed.

There’s always the chance, of course, that a manager won’t change their behavior. They either won’t care enough about your feelings or won’t be willing to accommodate what you want, or they may not even be capable of modifying their own behavior. So be it. That’s when you should consider leaving, with the knowledge that you tried to fix things. At least you went through a process to try to make it work.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.