Once you realize your boss has undermined you, every meeting with your boss after that feels like this. Read on to understand why you are in this position and how you can prevent this for others.
During Alexander’s campaign to conquer Persia, Alexander was known to partake in the fiercest fighting of the major battles. His counterpart, Darius III of Persia, fled the battle field numerous times to preserve his own safety. In fact, he fled so fast in one battle that he left behind his family, who Alexander conveniently captured.
Alexander and Darius III represent the extremes of corporate leadership, obviously with less severe life and death consequences. But make no mistake, which way your leader leans, toward Alexander or Darius III, has significant political and career consequences for your future. When it comes to leadership courage, there is no in the middle here, your boss leans one way or the other.
If your boss leans toward Darius III and lacks the leadership courage to have your back, you need to move on as soon as possible.
A boss that does not get your back is a boss that doesn’t care about you as a professional. A boss that doesn’t get your back is a coward. Cowards don’t take chances. In order to advance in a company, someone has to take a chance on you. In order for someone to take a chance on you they have to believe in you. In order to believe in you a boss has to get to know you and care about your development.
Do you see this binomial self perpetuating cycle? If you don’t have a boss who will take a chance on you, then you don’t have a chance. Find another boss in the company, or leave. It’s okay to take your time with it, but as soon as you know you have a Darius III boss, you should immediately commit to getting the fuck out of there. Every year serving under Darius III is a wasted career year. Trust me, I wasted five and they should have been five of my best years.
All that remains is the timing of leaving. You see, if you just think about leaving or tell yourself I’ll plan on leaving if such and such doesn’t get better, all you are doing is following a strategy of hope. Hope that the situation will change, hope that you boss may get moved on. Remember, cowardly bosses have one objective, survival. They are far more skilled at corporate survival than you, so the probability of hope working as a strategy is very low.
Your cowardly boss will continuously undermine your status and influence. He may not even know he is doing it. But if you have more expertise and some talent, and your boss is insecure as a leader, it’s very likely that he is following a systematic program to undermine you.
How does your boss undermine you? In most large companies today, political correctness is absolute; the days of bosses screaming and publicly humiliating employees are in the past. Here are two examples of how it works. Both are subtle and you won’t even realize it until it’s too late.
Example #1: At the chief boss’s staff meeting, which your boss never misses, someone makes a disparaging remark about you. Because your boss is a coward (assume for purposes of this example that he is not explicitly undermining you), he lets the remark go uncontested. An uncontested grievance is a validation of the grievance. Boom. A negative perception about you is just born. Because this is a staff meeting with all functional heads within the chief boss’ empire present, this (mis)perception mutates across each team represented at that meeting. Seizing the political advantage, the other lieutenant bosses then spread this negative perception to their own teams.
Example #2: You communicate to your boss about a plan to meet one of your stated goals for the year. You have vetted it with your team, gotten buy in from your team, and made the necessary preparations. You inform your boss. Your boss may not demonstrate excitement but he doesn’t reject your plan. To you, that’s a go. You execute, but this is after all, a complicated business and hiccups happen. Your boss has a choice. He can back your plan and help you through it (Alexander), or he can play it safe so that he doesn’t have to put himself on the line and he instructs you to reverse what you have done (Darius III).
In both examples, you have no idea how badly your boss has undermined you until it’s too late. You only realize the subversion at your next annual review. The ancient empires of Greece, Persia and the ones before created many innovative ways to torture miscreants, but even they couldn’t conceive of a more conniving and soul crushing torture than the corporate annual review process.
When you are forced to rate all employees on a single scale, regardless of job responsibilities, the fighting among lieutenant bosses for the limited number of high performers requires impeccable justification. Every boss wants to get high performers, not for the benefit of the employee, but for the benefit that comes from giving out the high rating to the employee. Your cowardly boss will also fight for a minimum number of high ratings on his team because that is what the crowd does. Every other boss fights for her team, so by not fighting for a high performer your boss would stick out, the last thing cowards want to do.
The corporate review process puts tremendous scrutiny and pressure on all bosses to justify all of their performance ratings, even the ones right on the top of the bell curve (for our readership, that means average). Instead of just saying, “Moronovich, you did a fine job but fell just short of the higher rating. Here’s some ideas to give you a shot at the higher rating next year…” your boss rationalizes the shit out of his decision. He looks for reasons why you don’t deserve the higher rating. This bastardization of the process results in an exhaustive focus on finding faults. A talented cowardly boss can conjure up an awesome display of shortcomings for the average employee, and even more for you.
Yes, here comes the lashing! In example #1, “Well, there is a negative perception from some people that you [fill in the blank,…don’t massage other Boss Clyde’s balls enough…or, should have stuck your tongue up Boss Bonnie’s ass before collaborating with her employee.”..you get the picture].
Or in example #2, “You made a significant mistake in your execution of a plan that I didn’t approve, resulting in a lack of trust that will be difficult to overcome.” Fucking ingenious! Did you notice the deviousness? Your boss never gave you explicit approval for your idea. He left himself on out, a way to put a mishap, or even a mere imperfect result, back on you. Of course, he left himself a way to steal your credit for a successful execution as well.
In both examples, this comes as a total shock to you. Where you tried to do good work, now you are made to feel like you did something wrong, or that you wronged someone else. Your boss guises this as just offering constructive feedback and uses corporate buzzwords (we call them “Fuck Words”) like “straight talk” while you wonder where the fuck and who the fuck these perceptions are coming from. You ask, but get no answers in return.
Now you forever despise the review process, you lose any trust you had in your boss and you have a fucking perception problem. And here’s the kick in the shins, your boss actually thinks he is the courageous one by having the balls to bring this to your attention, when he really fucked you over a long time ago. There’s your definition of incompetence.
So now you know you need to move on. But wait, at Akrasiabros, we see the big picture only in hindsight, after we screwed up. And so far, we have only presented half the picture.
You will eventually find yourself on the other side of this situation. Nothing highlights the best strategic battle plan than losing a battle because Darius III was your commander. Here we present your Alexander battle plan.
#1: ALWAYS HAVE YOUR PEOPLES’ BACKS
This applies equally to team leaders and team members. If someone from a different team, in any setting, says something disparaging about one of your people or teammates, even if not maliciously intended (a rarity, but sometimes can happen), immediately plant a contesting flag. Your objective is not to disprove the allegation straightaway. Your aim is not to win this battle, it’s to manipulate your enemy into thinking there is no need for the battle. If you act defensively, you will only strengthen the other’s opinion. Just a few examples for younger employees or new team leaders:
Responding to example #1:
“Thank’s Dick for sharing. I am aware of that situation and that doesn’t really sound like Sally. Let me check into the details and get back to you on that.”
Or…”Oh, I didn’t realize little Johny didn’t have a chance to share his response with you before he sent it. You know what, that’s totally my fault. When I asked him to respond, I was so focused on the importance of getting it out as soon as possible that I totally forgot to have him send it to you before hand. I won’t forget next time.”
Responding to example #2:
“So there were some complications in the execution. Look, I wasn’t clear with you on my priorities for execution, but what do you think of the following ideas?…”
Or… “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I still think we can get this done. I know Jane over in Department Y, how about I give her a call and see if she can help you?”
You have your peoples’ backs simply by being direct, diplomatic, and professional. Let the other boss have their say without putting them on the defensive, but make it clear that you are contesting their allegation. And when things go wrong,
#2: TAKE THE FUCKING BLAME!
When you do that, you accomplish your objective of misdirecting the original grievance, or you deflect any potential negativity from your team member so they can continue to focus on the main priority.
For you younger talents out there, a good leader will ALWAYS bring these issues to your attention immediately. Even if you screwed up and the accuser is right about your actions, a good leader will immediately offer HELP in coaching the situation and taking corrective action. When you hear about it for the first time in the annual review, at best your boss is a coward, at worst your boss is undermining you. Neither is worthy of your talents and energy.
Alexander’s troops were always outnumbered in virtually every battle during the conquest of Persia. His troops, however, always knew Alexander was there to fight for them. He had their backs. By fleeing battles, Darius III undermined his troops when they most needed leadership. So if you are in the majority of hardworking productive employees and have Darius III as your boss, seek out an Alexander, and work your ass off to find a way to get on his team.
–Moronovich