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Working Against Your Boss
Is it OK to lie to your boss? To plot against him or her? If so, when? For what reasons?
I’ve been there. I have had had staff working directly against me because they did not think I deserved the job. Making things up, fudging numbers, spreading rumors. They helped sow the seeds of my ultimate “Termination without Cause.” Ugly.
I get they did not think I should have the job. I think they should have resigned, not worked against me. If you have a job, it is your job to support your boss. If he or she is not supportable, you should leave, not foment rebellion or spread rumors, or change the books to make the boss look bad.
But, maybe I am biased as it happened to me. I have never worked against a boss, even one I did not like. What do you think?
Published in General
I agree with you as long as there is no unethical behavior. If there is, I would work through appropriate channels (we have a ethics reporting line) to report it.
But other than that, it is your job to support your boss.
I agree with reporting unethical behavior. But, if that was going on, I’d look to leave.
And I have seen too many people cry “ethics” when what they really meant was “I don’t like what you want me to do”. That card gets over played a lot.
I’m sorry that happened to you.
Thanks, but that is now over two years in the review mirror.
It sounds like you think it was wrong?
Odd you lost your job. I have seen many people work against their boss. It is a losing proposition. The only times I have seen the subordinate win is when minorities are involved and they pull their protected class status card.
These seem to be acceptable behaviors for the Left especially in government employment.
I had a neighbor who was the second level manager at a large Raytheon aircraft rehab facility in San Antonio. I remember him telling me he had been working for a new top manager and after some months of frustration (his beef was that the manager didn’t understand the business well and made bad decisions) he started practicing what he called “malicious obedience”. Basically he quit trying to save the manager from his own bad calls. It really bothered him as he said he had never done anything like it before. He eventually left the company after a lot of years.
Without knowing more details it’s hard to judge if it was right or wrong.
Recently we have started on a serious program to improve the schools in the local public school district where I am a trustee. Some of the long term staff are pushing back, thinking that we will change our minds. They haven’t yet figured out that the new administrators we hired have our full support. I’ve told a few people that there’s nothing wrong with deciding “I can’t work under these conditions”, but that means it’s incumbent on them to leave, not for the organization to change to suit them.
I believe the unions refer to that as “working to rule[book]”. It’s apparently a great way to monkey wrench an organization.
Yes and no. The ultimate loyalty should be to the owners, not the boss.
However it is very hard to function if a boss is being undercut.
a.k.a. a white mutiny.
With Clavius’ caveat about unethical behavior by the boss, I would say no, it’s a very bad idea for multiple reasons.
This bit about fudging numbers, though, if I caught that happening, that would be a hanging offense.
I can only think of one bad boss I have had. I went around her once, up to her manager. I also managed to out-think her several times, including getting another employee and myself re-assigned on the basis that the account was closing down and we needed to get in new people employed directly by the client.
That’s an expression (working to rule) that is much used in the UK
Hmm. I don’t think I’ve done the sort of things you suggest. I have bad-mouthed them off the clock, and they were factors in me seeking new employment but I’ve never tried to do anything to remove someone.
I think so. I couldn’t stand most restaurants I worked at for that exact reason.
Id be interested in what our fellow PITster @misthiocracy has to say.
I’ve worked for all sorts of bosses. Wonderfully competent ones who were, in human terms, absolute [redacteds]. Barely competent ones who were lovely people. Ones who were neither. Some who were both. And I agree with Bryan. If a person finds he or she is a bad “fit” on the organizational chart, it’s time to look for another job. I’ve been lucky, in that every time, except for once, I’ve been able to find another job before bailing on the one that was giving me heartburn.
As a boss myself, I once had to sit in a room and listen to four of my employees dump all over a fourth (she was one of the four), because she had upset the applecart by being a doctor’s daughter with a computer science degree. She and one other of the four had a CS degree; two did not, and although “I’ll call her Sally” was very competent, and had interned on my staff for a summer a couple of years previous, so I knew she could do the work, the other three were sure she’d only been hired because she was a physician’s daughter. They blamed me for being stupid/blind/politically craven for hiring her. None of those things (well, certainly not the second or third, was true). As with most of these “work against the boss” scenarios, fear and greed was at the bottom of it–the fear of job insecurity, and the greed that someone else might, by being hired at the same good salary as I am, end up taking money away from me.
I thank God that, at the time, I had a great boss, who made them face me directly (they’d gone over my head to him first). My loyalty to my boss, which had been strong before, became absolute after that.
I’ve also had a group of employees try to unionize on me, going behind my back to human resources, telling lies about what was going on, and led by one who said his irritable bowel syndrome made it impossible for him to work shifts, dragged me to EEO court. We won.
Then there was the guy who started a letter writing campaign, accused me of having affairs with several of the hospital software vendors, and of endangering the hospital network by assigning “illegal IP addresses” and of other sorts of staggering incompetence as a woman and as his boss. I fired him, in the presence of two of my co-managers, both former USMC, and useful in a punch-up, with Hospital security in the building lobby, and the local police force in the street outside. A bit less that two years later, he slit the throats of his wife, his father-in-law, his sister-in-law and his toddler niece. He was picked up at a New York airport trying to get back to Pakistan with his two sons. That was on September 11, 1999. (Coincidence? I think not.) He’s still on death row in Ohio.
So, I place a very high degree on loyalty, whether it’s among friends, or in the direction of employees towards bosses, or from bosses towards employees. To answer the questions in the OP: It is never OK to lie to your boss. Or to plot against your boss. If you’re in a situation where your boss is a criminal or a sociopath, following the chain of command and telling the truth about him or her, falls into neither of those categories. Otherwise, if you just don’t like your boss, or you disagree with your boss, find another line of work, or suck it up, buttercup.
I am not a “relative morality” guy, but context does matter. The context that Bryan sets out contains no justification for the conduct described.
There can be contexts where resignation is not an option, reporting to higher authority is not an option, and compliant support is not an option. But that is an extreme. Nevertheless there is a hierarchy of options that need to be thought through when confronted by leadership that is, shall we say, “challenging” to support. And it never starts with “I will do any immoral/unethical act to ensure your firing.”
When I first read your post, I assumed you were going to make an analogy about President Trump and the Deep State working against him.
I think the larger the bureaucracy, the more potential for layers of management and lower admin people to have the capability to undermine or work against a superior. I suspect there is no larger bureaucracy than the federal government.
If you can’t make your boss look good, try not to make him look bad.
My personal experience was with an awful plant manger I worked for one year. I ran the operations side and the new manager didn’t understand the operation very well. The employees understood that I was running a lot of interference for them and they were supportive. After about ten months I found out that a bunch of them had complained to the corporate office and they finally moved the manager out. He stayed on the corporate staff. I felt like I had done my best with a crappy situation but it would be interesting to hear how he remembers it. At one point later the CEO told me I should have pushed back harder, which I thought was really bad advice, but I guess in his mind it relieved him of some responsibility.
Any veteran here could tell you about working for a self-serving commander. The services are so big that you can’t help but have some bad leaders around.
As a military guy, I saw it as my job to not only support the boss in every way legally and morally possible, but to get him to see me as an integral part of his success. Not to apply vacuum suckle, but so that he had the confidence to let me (and the members of his team) run with a long leash.
But, as one of my best friends, who got out as an Army Captain, it’s different in the military. In the Army culture, it’s expected to be able to go into the boss’ office, rant and rave at how bad any certain decision was, maybe kick the trash can. You go in knowing you could hear, “You know what? I just had a road to Damascus moment, and you’re the donkey I rode in on.” Or, you could hear, “Thank you for your feedback, now get your ass back out there and do what I told you to do.” Either answer, the boss was going to get 100% of my efforts and energy. Even if the guy holds it against you, it might not be a career ender. Private sector, though, you can tell your boss the unvarnished truth and 15 minutes later have security escorting you out the building with a promise to mail your personal effects to you. I got it.
I did have, over the course of a three-decade career, two bosses that were totally, thoroughly toxic. Those two were the two with whom, in the interest of mission success, I was the most insubordinate. Strangely, I fully expected to get wire brushed, if not relieved, and was surprised when I wasn’t.
As a young Lieutenant Colonel (as opposed to the old and broken Lieutenant Colonel I retired as) I fully expected the Admiral I teed off on to fire me. I went off once in a private setting (deep in the bowels of the SCIF), once with just the Command Group present, and once in front of the whole staff. To my amazement, I walked out of each whole, hale and hearty.
I think it is usually wrong to work actively against the boss. I do not, however, consider it wrong to go to the boss’ boss (or to some other relevant organization in the company such as the finance or legal) if I think my boss is doing something that will harm the company. But the overarching objective has to be the well-being of the company.
I believe actively working against the boss has a high probability of backfiring. If the boss looks bad, the whole department may look bad, and result may not be just punishment of the boss, but reduction of employees (which may include
youth[edit – you the] line employee!), or elimination of the department. But then I may be naively relying on my own experiences in which helping my boss look good helped me get promotions, sometimes into lines of authority that did not include that boss. I have been promoted to positions in which I became a peer of a former boss. Undermining that boss would have put that promotion path in jeopardy.As I’ve said a couple of times before being a former federal employee, I had to work on things I personally or politically did not agree with. However, supporting the boss was no problem because we all worked at implementing the decisions made from above. I should note the higher the boss in level, the more likely he was to work against top level policy. Don’t know why . . .
Going over the boss’s head to inform the owners of a problem with the boss is a task frought with peril, but sometimes a decision which must be made. Anyone doing this should have documentation, corroborating testimony, and a backup plan should the boss prevail.
My guess is that those higher up may believe they might actually help change policy with which they disagreed.
I was not trying to make a Trump argument at all, though I suppose folks like Comey come to mind as snakes working for you.
The problem with that analogy is that the owners are the voters and the Board keeps swinging.
Lots of good insight into the issue.
I do think one sort of works for the owners, but in a big company, who are the owners anyway? Stockholders don’t care. You work for your boss, maybe for the good of the company, whatever that means. I don’t think any big company will every replay loyalty to it over your boss in most cases.
I once worked in a department where I felt the boss was making really bad decisions for the department. I kept it to myself, did my job, and just dealt with it. Until one day I was in the break room getting a cup of coffee and the bosses boss (the CFO) came in to get himself some joe as well. “How are things going?”, he asked. I paused a minute trying to figure out if I should say something. He looked at me and read my thoughts. “Come in my office.”
I told him how I felt. I gave examples of poor decisions. I concluded by saying “I was in the military, I respect the chain of command. But I suspect you are hearing things from other department managers, and I want you to know that the quality of our department manager doesn’t reflect the quality of our department.” He said that yes, he had heard things, and was looking at the situation closely, and thanked me for my input.
Now, a pause in the story: should I have said anything to him? By your logic I should have supported the boss. I don’t agree.
A few months later, the CFO called me to his office and said he was firing the department manager and he’d already hired a replacement. He asked me to help the new manager succeed, to help him learn the company, etc. Within a few weeks of the new manager, I realized he was someone I could not work with. But because the CFO had hired him, and I respected the CFO, I said “You asked me to support this guy and to support you. The best way I can do that is to leave the department. To that end I’m taking a role in another department, and I’m giving you my two weeks’ notice.”
Why did I undercut the first boss, but leave for the second boss? Simple: the first boss wasn’t selected by the CFO, and the second one was. And because I had a lot of respect for the CFO, I said “He knows what kind of manager he wants. IO’ll get out of the way.”
Now, as it turned out, the CFO said “No, don’t do that. I’m not really all that jazzed with this guy.” Turned out the new guy had made a couple of end runs on the CFO (smart thing to do, if you’ve been there about 5 minutes). In the end the CFO fired the second manager and gave me the job. I ended up running that crew for 10 years.
An employee’s ultimate loyalty should be to his or her team. Not to the boss, not to the company, not to the owner.
A bosses ultimate loyalty should be to his or her team. Not to any individual employee, not to his or her boss, not to the company, nor the owner.
You be loyal to your team. Nobody leaves bad jobs…they leave bad bosses, and bad teams. Bad bosses are almost always those who see themselves as a boss, and not a part of the team.
I don’t know your situation Bryan, so don’t take this the wrong way, but when the team is broken it is nearly always the leader. If a leader feels undercut and threatened by his team, he should ask himself “What am I doing or not doing that is causing this?”
There is a clear difference between undercutting someone you don’t like, and someone who is not doing the job well.
Of course.
Now this is a great story. Our current CFO is making a strong effort to know all the people at the level below his direct reports and even below that level. He wants to know what is going on and make it better. People are beginning to believe he means what he says.
I am fortunate to have an excellent boss whom I can support 100%.
Oh, and the CFO has made some very good replacements over the last couple of years. The right people were let go. Coming to think of it, it is occurring, for the most part, across the company (new CEO too).