Having issues with your manager? As coaches, we can guide our clients to ‘manage up’, bringing integrity, honesty and care to the relationship.
By Lynn Scott
‘My boss is a nightmare’
How many times has someone come to you for their coaching session with steam coming out of their ears – and it’s all about ‘the boss’?
‘My boss doesn’t respond to my emails’
‘My boss won’t make a decision’
‘My boss keeps cancelling my one-to-ones’
‘My boss is useless’ (ouch).
While those people we coach will often talk about empathy and understanding for their own team members, they find it harder to have the same empathy and compassion for their immediate line manager.
‘Managing up’ is a key skill for all of us and knowing how to do this with integrity, honesty and care is crucial.
This is how we leaders-as-coaches and other coaches can help.
When I’m coaching someone who ‘has issues’ with their boss, I like to start with a few questions. I’ll share a conversation I had with someone I coached recently to demonstrate. In this instance I’m calling the boss Katy and the person I’m coaching, Tom.
Starter questions: find the human behind the title
I asked Tom to tell me about Katy because I wanted him to start seeing her as a human being rather than just a role or job title. Try a few of these questions with those you coach about their boss, and see what you both learn:
- What do you know about Katy as a person? Who is she at work and outside work?
- What are her big goals and priorities?
- What does Katy need from you to be able to do her best work?
- What does Katy do really well?
- What pressures or challenges do you imagine Katy is feeling right now?
- If you were her best friend, how would you describe her?
- How can you help her be a better leader?
- How can you be an ally for her?
That last three inevitably pull people up short. Because we can often be rather unforgiving when it comes to our leaders. Expecting perfection when it doesn’t exist or expecting our leaders to ‘know’ what we need from them. Of course, some people have ‘issues’ with anybody in authority but that’s a topic for another time.
In a previous session, Tom told me that he felt unsupported by Katy. Yet, when we explored this, he wasn’t clear on what ‘support’ meant to him. It’s one of those words that can have many different meanings. As coaches we know about balancing support and challenge – but let’s get clear on the meaning of those words to the person in front of us.
One of the things Tom can do is to be explicit about the support he wants and needs and stop assuming that Katy is a mind reader.
“Well, she should know,” he said.
Should she? Why?
- Know how to ‘get her to listen’
“I wish she would listen to me,” said Tom.
Tom needs to understand how to better influence Katy and tailor his communication to fit her preferences. Tom believes he needs to give Katy a lot of detailed information to help her make the right decisions for the business. “But sometimes it’s like she’s not listening and interrupts me mid-flow – I think it’s rude,” he said. “And she does it to other people, too.”
Ah yes, that disconnect between how we communicate and what other people want to hear. Tom realised during our session that Katy isn’t a big fan of detail. He remembered that she often asks for ‘headlines’ and prefers short, succinct, concise communication, whether it’s verbal or written. She’s the person who recently introduced the ‘plan on a page’ idea to cut through the ‘waffle’. She explained that she trusts that her team have the detail – and if she wants more, she’ll ask.
To help Tom with this, we agreed to a ‘cut the waffle’ experiment in our coaching. Whenever I felt that Tom was going off on a tangent or giving me a lot of detail, I’d raise the ‘waffle’ card. I asked him to raise it too, if he caught himself doing it. The question we both held in mind was, ‘Are my words moving us forward or not.’
No judgement either way.
Tom loved this. It focused his mind, he said, on being clear and concise. It made him pause and organise his thoughts before saying everything out loud in a stream of consciousness.
Tom’s got a proposal to put to Katy shortly and we found a way to make it much punchier with the ‘bottom line up front’ so she doesn’t have to wade through a lot of information to see precisely what the benefits are. He’s prepared with the details and can make it available as and when she needs it.
- Ask for what you need
Ambiguity and assumption lead to frustration in any relationship, and it’s no different when that’s happening between a leader and a team member.
Tom wanted to discuss opportunities for career development but there never seemed to be any time in his one-to-ones with Katy.
How could he get this on the agenda? Well, he had to ask! Once he informed Katy that he wanted 15 minutes as part of his one-to-one to discuss promotion opportunities, she was more than willing to spend that time with him.
In fact, she suggested they have a separate, longer session and she asked him to tell her in advance what he was hoping for from the conversation so she could do some preparation too.
- Don’t collude
When faced with the ‘my boss is frustrating’ scenario our role isn’t to collude with the person we coach, with an ‘oh dear, poor you’. We don’t want to collude with their sense of helplessness or become part of the drama triangle that is persecutor-victim-rescuer. We want to help them discover ways to navigate the relationship. In my experience, most bosses have good intent even if they don’t always get it right.
Who does? Remembering that all-important ‘first seek to understand’ is a good way to see broader perspectives.
- The wider system
In addition to the presenting issue, the ‘boss/team member’ relationship, it’s helpful to look at the team and even the organisation as a system. What do we need to understand about the wider organisational system that might be playing out in the relationships there? When we can widen our lens, other insights might come into sharp focus. So we need to see beyond the relationship between two people to understand the broader issues at play.
Of course, we know there are some bad bosses out there. In that case, our role as coaches is to help the person we’re coaching make some decisions about what they want to do next. To help them recognise the choices and options available to them.