Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Talk to Trump and get back to us on what its like to have people work against you. I’ve had a couple occasions where I’ve gone covert in defending my boss against the odds. I’ve typed up documents in defense of a boss who was being pushed out of a prestigious position at a prestigious college so he could build a defense. Some don’t remember Fawn Hall, but she was the secretary of Col. Oliver North, who smuggled defensive docs out by stuffing them in her bra. I felt the kinship…..he won his case. I had to defend two bosses at a high-tech consulting firm – both women – both great at their job, who were being muscled out by a tough – mainly men-ruled board. Sometimes its good to move on – for your mental health.
I have always felt a loyalty to the person that hired me – come what may.
This requires a fairly high level of organizational maturity and psychological safety. It also takes time for the team to think of itself as a team. And there are layers of teams. There is my team of senior IT leaders, but they each have teams of their own. And I am part of the IT senior leadership team. To whom do I owe my allegiance? Particularly if there are conflicts.
The boss sets the tone.
Undercutting is wrong. Open, honest communication is what is OK, particularly valuable if it is constructive criticism.
Telling stories or faking numbers or twisting perceptions is just wrong.
Amen.
Cooking the books is pretty bad in any circumstances.
Re: undercutting your boss – it’s usually not a good idea. I’d say there’s a moral aspect to that, though the whole team thing only really works if staff and boss (manager) take their obligations to each other seriously.
The term for management that I have heard most is “servant leader.” I think that is appropriate. You serve the team and help them. But you also lead them.
It is what I try to do.
The funny thing is, most people tell me they really like me as a boss. But, success and admiration have a tendency to also bring out the worst in some people.
Perhaps the more rigid the heirarchy in terms of what staff can do (and not do) the greater their urge to upset or undercut it?
I’ve found that while people need money (their salary) they also need respect (for their abilities and talents) to be contented (and productive) in a structure.
Or is that too pollyannaish? From experience the least supported bosses are the ones who give their staff the least scope.
Otoh, there are some staff who are just Bad People. If they’re disloyal to the manager they’ll be disloyal to each other too – which doesn’t seem like a recipe for long term success.
And sometimes, some people are just pieces of crap.
I edited before I saw your (pithy) response.
People need to be rewarded in respect and empowerment. But it takes time. One cannot delegate everything day one, but the best bosses are the ones working themselves out of their current jobs into another one. So they need you to take up their prior responsibilities. This process is likely harder in a small organization (point of reference, my company has 7,000 employees(,
Perhaps for union work, but for staff in all the five places I’ve worked it would have been a career decision. Following that recipe would get one very quickly made available for a better position in another company.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t necessarily need to get recognition for my work as long as a) I’m not being run down for good work and b) other people aren’t getting more recognition than I am for lower quality work. I will admit it helps though.
I would also observe that to lie – that is, to speak or otherwise communicate what you know is not true, with the intent to be believed – is never justified: And plotting is all of a piece.
I suppose it may be advisable on rare occasion, as has been suggested, to go over someone’s head but personally I held it for my exit interview and then only because they asked.
I’m not going to defend “working against your boss” but I think technically you have a duty to your employer, not your boss. That doesn’t justify deceit, or dishonesty, or manipulation or whatever. And there’s a lot to be said for trying to make your boss look good. But still, you don’t owe slavish devotion to a fellow employee just because s/he happens to be above you on the org chart.
I’d hate to have anyone “slavishly devoted” to me. We work together for mutual benefit.
And the post only asks for truth in behavior and communication.
There are times I should have worked against my boss. Many times.
Once I was working at a company that made propane gas regulators, my boss never allowed me to communicate with anyone above him in the small company. He made really bad decisions that resulted in our making flame throwers instead of regulators (the details would take too long to explain). He blamed, successfully, everyone but himself. I was able to figure out how it all happened and wrote a very detailed report, but I’m convinced no one ever saw that report except him and me. The company lost its dominance in the market (they went from 70% market share to about 30% in a couple months and as far as I can tell never recovered) and we had severe layoffs. I should have protected the company and went around my boss. My loyalty should have been to the company, not my boss.
I’ve been fortunate in my 33 years in the working world to have had a whole series of *really* good bosses, with only one exception near the middle of my career.
A bad boss really makes the working life miserable, and life is too short. The guy I’m thinking of was ex-military, and his motto was, “if they’re not bitching, they’re not happy”.
I never did anything (intentionally) to undermine him, although I don’t know if ever really had any opportunities either.
Public safety should, in many cases, be a definitive issue.
Public safety wasn’t really an issue. The matter was discovered before delivery to any consumer, thankfully. Our customers (Charbroil, etc.) lost their trust in our company as a supplier, though.
I’ve heard this idea expressed differently–that a good worker (or boss) does not see himself as indispensable. A true leader builds capacities so that pursuing the mission will go on even without him (or her).
My attitude as a minion is to make my boss and team look good. But I’ve mostly worked for good people. With the one boss I ever had who was problematic, my solution was to find other work.
Brian can tell us what he meant, but I read the post as suggesting you quit rather than seek to have a boss you think is bad replaced. I don’t think that’s fair to expect.
I think we’re all in accord that there are wrong ways to try to get your boss replaced – the use of deceit, etc. But my own view is that the idea of seeking that end isn’t per se inappropriate. For example, expressing honest concerns about your bosses performance or behavior to his/her boss can, I think, be appropriate. Probably better and fairer to go to your boss with them first in most cases, but not inappropriate to go higher up the chain.
Curious if anybody thinks it’s different if you’re a volunteer rather than an employee. The one circumstance in which I can ever remember working against a “boss” was as a volunteer.
Briefly, there’s an organization I’ve volunteered for my entire adult life – coming up on 40 years now. It’s got a small paid staff of about 8 and roughly 500 volunteers who do various things to support its (youth focused) mission in any given year.
About 15 years ago its board hired a new executive director who turned out to be an absolute disaster (in my opinion). He had supporters on the board and there were volunteers who didn’t have a problem with him, but hundreds of the volunteers hated him because of some things he did. Among other things, in this case it was the boss who was a pathological liar, but the real problem was simply that he wanted to dramatically alter the mission of the organization and push anyone out who didn’t share his vision. It was costing the organization volunteers who’d provided critical services for years, and damaging its reputation in the small community it serves.
I was a ringleader in a group of volunteers who spent several years actively campaigning to get him fired. Over time, we succeeded in placing enough allies on the board to do just that.
Was I wrong? I think he was one of the most morally depraved people I’ve ever met. Power hungry and when I say pathologically dishonest, it’s not hyperbole. He was also there for the paycheck. The volunteers he was either driving away or banning from volunteering feel a sense of ownership in the (non-profit) organization and are there because we’re committed to its work. We worked to get rid of him in order to save an organization we believe in and love. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
But by the OPs logic I wonder if I was supposed to walk away (as many volunteers did) rather than fight to take back the organization I’d been a part of my whole life from this vile interloper.
If it helps any – as part of the fight to oust him we learned that he’d both lied on his resume to get the job, and been fired from his previous job running another non-profit for essentially the same character defects that made him unacceptable to us.
I have had bad bosses. I either just did my job, or found another. Bosses are usually better at making their subordinates look bad than the converse.
That sounds all high falluting principled and all, but I’ve never seen that work for anyone who wants to rise higher in large organizations.
Being a high level manager is like being in a club. Once you’re in that club, it’s hard to stay out of it. When I worked at Dell, I was a low tier engineering manager in manufacturing. To be a higher level manager, you needed to come from the right school; in Dell’s case it was Michigan or MIT’s engineering management schools. Michael Dell is said to have vowed to hire every single graduate from MIT, and settled on Michigan to fill in for what he couldn’t take from MIT.
Nearly all of these people were “successes” at Dell. They never lost their jobs, always got promoted, and were a fierce clique. A few managers still remained from before the MIT hiring boom. My director was one of those and frankly, he was a buffoon. When Dell had its massive layoffs in 2001 he was one of the few managers let go. Good riddance. However, he had “Dell Director” on his resume, and that was enough for another reputable company to hire him on as one of their directors — even though objectively he wasn’t even very smart or talented.
I know of one lady at Dell who started as an administrative assistant, which is what used to be called a secretary. By controlling what was fed to her boss, she eventually became quite powerful at Dell within manufacturing, with the pay to match her power. She was quite bold, and a refreshing bit of sense within the company. But she didn’t rise because she made it so the organization would function without her; Quite the opposite, she rose because she was indispensable.
Your logic works in the military, where it is vital to survival to have people able to move up a level or three in battle at the drop of a . . . boss. The military purposefully keeps jobs as simple as possible too. In the civilian world where people aren’t expected to be killed on the job, making yourself indispensable and powerful is a much more effective way to move up. After you move up, then you find someone to do your old job.
That would have been mine had things not changed
Well, I was not a bad boss, as I had people loyal to me who thought I was doing a good job. It is telling that after I left, there were good staff who moved on rather quickly. Not all, but several. I will say, I outlasted the main players below me working against me. They all quit. It was one in particular, who I was mentoring who really worked to undermine me.
Again, the OP’s logic is about not liking someone because you don’t think they should have the job, not because they are unethical.
I would have loved to have the people working against me lay out their logical reasons why they did not like me. Or why it was OK to change the presentation of the budget to add a new line to make me look like I was spending money on myself that I was not. Or withhold information from me. Or badmouth me to their subordantes.
What was done to me was wrong. I guess, to you, it was in fact, justified.
Although volunteer jobs are often easier to walk away from than paying jobs, I don’t think the principles differ. I think most of our reactions to the OP are reactions to “Making things up, fudging numbers, spreading rumors” (i.e., apparently underhanded opposition). I see principled and open opposition, particularly if on substantive issues such as the mission of the organization, as different. But when undertaking open opposition, one needs to keep in mind that you may lose.
I was a manager in different activities (military and corporate) for many years before I became involved with volunteer work. In small volunteer organizations some principles are the same and some are different. I’ve been a volunteer fire chief for a long time now (8 years), and yet at any time the firefighters can call a special meeting and replace me. One of the most important things is involving everyone in big decisions, and that seems pretty unique to a small group and definitely a volunteer group. A couple of times we (the officers) have taken our department in a new direction and had a few disgruntled old timers, but in each case they eventually came to agree with the changes.
Contrast that with the school district changes I was talking about in my first post. That was the board hiring a superintendent that shared our ideas about where we wanted to go and backing her up. This is very top down and as much as we are trying to get employees to buy into the changes, ultimately it’s not up to them. It’s interesting that many unhappy employees blame it on the superintendent or one of the administrators when they are doing precisely what we asked of them.