Managing Your Manager's Flaws
25 September 2012
Read by 1550 persons
A boss is never perfect. Never. They can make efforts, attend seminars, get coaching... But their basic personality won't change. Good thing too! Otherwise we'd be in a society of clones. However, we need to learn to live with our bosses' imperfections.
A perfect manager would be unbearable.
Before judging your superior, accept that they are not perfect! To do this, tell yourself that this perfection would be unbearable:
• It would justify their excessively high professional demands.
• It would forbid criticism.
• It would negate the promotional ambitions of all imperfect people.
How to live with an imperfect manager?
First of all, it's essential to distinguish between surface irritations, which grow because we are tense, tired, or having personal or professional difficulties, and more fundamental "rejections." Taking a step back is essential for this.
Let's start by noting down our manager's qualities and flaws on a piece of paper, with the constraint that the two lists must be equal in number. Let's enrich them gradually, without rushing. And, during a calmer period, let's review the lists and erase anything secondary: for example, the fact that they are always late to meetings, send emails very late at night or on weekends... Then only the essential qualities and flaws in our eyes will remain.
The manager's flaws are very relative.
They are of two types:
• Flaws compensated for by qualities: for example, the manager has difficulty making decisions, but they support us and defend us when we propose and act. So let's not hesitate to take initiatives, but without short-circuiting them. Or the manager decides too quickly, but they admit to reconsidering their decision if we prove it's wrong. So let's avoid seeing them before forming our own opinion and prepare to argue in two stages. In all cases, we must adapt and learn to play, to outsmart the manager's personality.
• Irredeemable flaws: this appreciation is very personal. Indeed, certain attitudes of the manager may seem intolerable to us because they touch on an essential value for us. Whereas our colleague, on the other hand, accepts them, their hierarchy of values being different.
The boss's flaws tell us about ourselves.
Intolerance towards a boss's flaws first questions us about ourselves. We must learn to identify what seems unacceptable to us and understand why. Once this work is done, we can then decide accordingly whether the intolerable is negotiable and, if not, work towards leaving this manager, having a better chance of not finding ourselves facing the same type of personality. But we are talking about extreme cases here and, on average, the manager is "manageable." Above all, we must learn to manage ourselves.
Christian Oyarbide.
Etre-bien-au-travail.fr
Published September 10, 2012.
Posted online September 25, 2012.
A perfect manager would be unbearable.
Before judging your superior, accept that they are not perfect! To do this, tell yourself that this perfection would be unbearable:
• It would justify their excessively high professional demands.
• It would forbid criticism.
• It would negate the promotional ambitions of all imperfect people.
How to live with an imperfect manager?
First of all, it's essential to distinguish between surface irritations, which grow because we are tense, tired, or having personal or professional difficulties, and more fundamental "rejections." Taking a step back is essential for this.
Let's start by noting down our manager's qualities and flaws on a piece of paper, with the constraint that the two lists must be equal in number. Let's enrich them gradually, without rushing. And, during a calmer period, let's review the lists and erase anything secondary: for example, the fact that they are always late to meetings, send emails very late at night or on weekends... Then only the essential qualities and flaws in our eyes will remain.
The manager's flaws are very relative.
They are of two types:
• Flaws compensated for by qualities: for example, the manager has difficulty making decisions, but they support us and defend us when we propose and act. So let's not hesitate to take initiatives, but without short-circuiting them. Or the manager decides too quickly, but they admit to reconsidering their decision if we prove it's wrong. So let's avoid seeing them before forming our own opinion and prepare to argue in two stages. In all cases, we must adapt and learn to play, to outsmart the manager's personality.
• Irredeemable flaws: this appreciation is very personal. Indeed, certain attitudes of the manager may seem intolerable to us because they touch on an essential value for us. Whereas our colleague, on the other hand, accepts them, their hierarchy of values being different.
The boss's flaws tell us about ourselves.
Intolerance towards a boss's flaws first questions us about ourselves. We must learn to identify what seems unacceptable to us and understand why. Once this work is done, we can then decide accordingly whether the intolerable is negotiable and, if not, work towards leaving this manager, having a better chance of not finding ourselves facing the same type of personality. But we are talking about extreme cases here and, on average, the manager is "manageable." Above all, we must learn to manage ourselves.
Christian Oyarbide.
Etre-bien-au-travail.fr
Published September 10, 2012.
Posted online September 25, 2012.
