Advice for how to communicate with an ego-driven boss

In My Humble Opinion
1

Help, my name is you with the face and my boss is getting on my last nerves.

I started here in July. Since I worked here years previously, I am no stranger to the place and am fairly knowledgeable about how things work here.

My boss is relatively new to the division; she started here about a year ago. I wasn’t with the organization at the time, but according to others, it wasn’t a smooth start: she ruffled a lot of feathers by changing things around supposedly to make things more efficient (which hasn’t happened…if anything the inefficiency is worse but I digress). As a consequence of ruffling feathers, her ability to lead has been damaged. Routinely, she will issues orders that go ignored. To get around this, she delegates managerial responsibility to others (including me). Increasingly, more and more of her duties as boss are being shouldered by folks who have nineteen hundred other things on their plate to worry about. Simply because she can’t lead folks effectively (and surprisingly, has admitted as much to me).

But this is just the background, not the problem.

After spending a month or more laboring over it, she just finished writing up the FY12 operational plan for the division. Since I’ve gotten here, she has talked this thing up as though it’s gonna be the biggest, most important roadmap to our division’s future. So maybe my expectations were raised. She created it in isolation, without consulting with anyone else, but then last week she asked for all the team leads to look at it and be ready to provide some feedback to it. Which I did.

Tactfully, I tried to communicate to her that the objectives as written would not be clear to anyone in the division without a masters degree in systems engineering (which none of us have, as we’re all veterinary science folks and in the business of public health, not IT systems). The language needs to be plain enough that anyone qualified to work in the division could understand it. Aren’t we supposed to implement it? Secondly, I told her that the objectives do not appear to be clearly tied to the outcome we’re trying to attain. The link is not obvious. Therefore, the likelihood of anyone getting behind these ideas and investing limited time into seeing them through is chancey. We are big picture people and any plan that we follow will have to reflect that, or else nothing will happen.

She has reacted poorly to my feedback. Feedback that she requested and oddly enough, repeatedly keeps asking for, as though I might decide to change my opinion spontaneously. Today, after seeking validation from me once again about this silly plan–only to hear the same thing I told her last week and the week before–she made me to do a “learning exercise” that involved me constructing a logic model that will serve no purpose except to teach me something about…whatever it is she wants me to learn. In other words, she penalized me for giving my opinion by giving me condenscending busywork that advances nothing other than my frustration level. In the meantime, her plan remains unchanged. It’s as though my feedback and those of others hasn’t made a single dent in her thinking. Not that I’m that surprised by that, but goddamn, why does she keep asking for my feedback if it’s not going to change anything? It’s like Chinese water torture.

So here’s my first question: did I make a mistake by being honest? You’ll just have to take my word that I wasn’t rude or blunt, but I didn’t sugarcoat either. My feedback was specific, unambiguous, and straight to the point, which is how I normally operate when I’m asked for my professional opinion.

My second question is, knowing what I know now about how she takes feedback on something that she feels personally invested in, how should I express constructive criticism in the future? Or should I just nod my head and stay quiet? Honestly, what would yall do? How do yall manage similar personalities at work or at home?

2

Surely, you aren’t the only person she asked for feedback. Have you spoken to others who dared to be honest? How did she react to them?

In my experience, being honest with this personality type gets you nowhere. This boss is looking for Yes people. I’d probably keep my head down, nod and smile, and offer really useful, helpful feedback such as, “Looks good!” She doesn’t want actual feedback. Why waste your time trying to give it to her?

3

Example from my current job:

My boss works and lives at another location halfway across the country. I’ve never met her in person. One day, she scheduled this department meeting and required us all to call in for a WebEx training (her employees are scattered around the country). In advance of the meeting, she sent out this enormous spreadsheet.

Turns out this big spreadsheet was basically a huge list of everything a person in my position might be asked to do, and each column laid out the level of responsibility each person has toward that task. There really wasn’t much new information in there. It was sort of like, “Do task A, notify People B, C, and D.” She spent two hours on this call, reviewing each page with us over the phone. I noticed, during her presentation, that she made a point of noting how much time and work she’d spent on this spreadsheet. She seemed really, really proud of it.

A day or two later, I had a one-on-one meeting/call with her. She was so proud of this spreadsheet, she wanted feedback on the amazing, useful tool she’d provided me with. My honest opinion was that she’d wasted a colossal amount of time on what amounted to busywork. I didn’t go anywhere near saying anything like that. Instead, I played to her ego and said, “Wow, I’m really impressed with the amount of work you must have put into that. You must be really proud of that document.”

She bit and swallowed that right down. I kept talking about how much work she’d done and didn’t really comment at all on the actual document. This, apparently, was exactly what she wanted to hear. She was all relieved and expressed her appreciation for my “productive feedback.” All I did was pump up her ego. I haven’t referred to or used her spreadsheet since that initial meeting. In fact, I chucked it in a drawer and completely forgot about it. But she got to tick off some task from her to-do list and her performance appraisal was probably tied, in part, to that project. So I told her what she wanted to hear: She’s awesome. (My jury’s still out on that, but I did find her quite easy to manipulate.)

So I revise my advice to: when dealing with an ego-driven boss, play to her/his ego. Give her accolades for all the hard work she did on her big plan. Do not comment on the plan. She doesn’t want validation of her work, she wants validation of her usefulness as a person. Yes, that’s a tad dishonest and I’m sure you have a lot of other more pressing matters on your mind, but it beats wasting your valuable time doing useless busy work because you “didn’t get it” when she presented her Grand Master Plan for Success™.

4

Study up on the Socratic method. You need to lead her to conclusions by asking the right questions.

Be careful, it’s a very powerful method once you get used to it. If you make the mistake of using it on your friends and family you will get your way in everything; right up until the day they murder you in your sleep. :wink:

5

Right. Before you start using the Socratic method, it’s a good idea to review exactly what happened to Socrates …

6

First, I don’t think egotism is the problem. It is more lack of communication skills.
As for a suggestion, could you transform the plan into some clear and actionable items?
It is possible that there is a nugget of a reasonable plan in there, and doing this would give everyone marching orders without needing to know systems engineering. It might also reveal an obviously absurd number of tasks. Dilbert a few days ago had the PHB giving the 25 focus items for next year. Her plan can be transformed into something useful without her having to renounce her plan.

7

I think TruCelt has a point, although I would phrase it differently. But in a more general answer to your question, here is my feedback:

  1. Start with praise. Doesn’t matter what, find something to praise. It sounds like “I can see you spent a lot of time and effort on this document” might have worked.

  2. Then go into “I do have some questions, there are one or two points I’m not getting”. Make your points by asking questions, or at least saying “I’m not quite getting how this objective will help us towards this goal, can you help me understand that?”

  3. Assuming that you get her to participate at that level, and she has had to explain several of these points in simpler language to you, you might be able to get away with “I wonder if the others are as confused as I was, before you explained it to me. Maybe we could re-phrase some of the key points using layman’s language?” and offer to edit one to show what you mean.

In other words, I myself think that I appreciate direct and candid feedback, but lots of people don’t. Lots of bosses, especially, who (in my opinion) have a sneaking suspicion that they have been promoted beyond the level of their competence. So you pander to that insecurity a little, and get where you need to go. Or at least where they think you need to go. Believe me, if this works, the boss will love you and think you are her biggest supporter, even if you think she’s a horse’s ass.
Roddy

8

I think you have an uncanny handle on my particular situation, and are probably on to something with this advice. The fact that she spent sooo much time working on it, by herself without inviting anyone else to collaborate with her, should have been a signal to me that she didn’t really want any constructive criticism. She wanted me to be impressed by all the ambitious sounding words she used. And I disappointed her by refusing to fall on my knees to hear the angel’s voices.

By the way, no one else has offered any feedback to her except “Can you explain what you mean by this, this, and that?” Although she has had to explain herself multiple times, she refuses to use plainer language to communicate her plan. I think she likes to hide behind the mystique of systems engineering jargon, maybe to mask the nothingness behind the ideas themselves.

That’s actually the approach I used, which is probably what helped justify in her mind making attacks on my intelligence and so-called lack of division perspective. “Oh, she’s too ignorant to recognize magnificence when she sees it!” was her attitude yesterday.

I think I’m going to start overpraising her. It’s actually how she routinely talks to us. Makes me feel like a Special Olympian when I get an award just for remembering to breath, yes it does. But apparently she does this because that’s how she wants people to relate to her. This is my little epiphany of the day.

9

I am going to tell you how I dealt with it and give you an honest appraisal of the results:

I have the same kind of ego-driven asshat for a boss. He is a Yes Man loves having them in return. But early on, I told myself that there was no way I could suppress my real feelings in order to pump up the ego of an idiot. I still stand by that.

For me personally, I would continue to tell her the truth. Among the things I’ve said to my boss was that some of his plans seemed pointless. That he was searching for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. That he distrusts his employees and allows us no freedom to make decisions ourselves. That he should lean on the experience of people, like me, who have worked here for a while and know the job, instead of coming in here and changing everything. I have defended my performance evaluation of my staff to 4 managers sitting across from me in a conference room because it was the right thing to do, even if it was easier for me to just agree with them that they remove the exalting language I used to decribe her performance

It has gotten me little in return, but I cannot go back to kissing his ass. I tried it for a month before the requests got so stupid I could barely contain my rage (I cannot contained the expressions of incredulousness and confusion that I give him everytime he tells me something stupid). I can’t and I won’t, and at the end of the day, if I have to be miserable doing a stupid job in an inefficient way, then I would rather do it over my objections and say what I feel rather than pretend like I’m someone I’m not. I would absolutely refuse to bend to the idiocy of management.

My advice is for you to look inside and see what kind of person you are. I asked myself if I would be happier telling my boss the truth or being his personal bitch. At the end of the day, I chose the former, and I stick by it. There may be days I regret it, but its not as if I can’t say yes to him occasionally to get him off my back. For example, I was working on an outline for a meeting one day, and before lunch he came over and said it was good, except he wanted one thing changed: the symbol I used for the indentation. It was almost noon and I was hungry, and I swear I stared at him for at least 5 seconds before deciding I didn’t want to fight that battle and changed it. But that was a long 5 seconds.

In other things, I still freely tell him his ideas shouldn’t be used. Though it may do little, I try to explain to him why a certain thing he wants is not feasible, or would be more inefficient, or isn’t good enough to switch from our current procedures. To me, that would be better than saying yes to everything he does. I’m not happy, but I wouldn’t be if I had gone the other route either

I just wanted you to know that there is another way other than the advice most people seem to give, which is to simply get along. Some people are too stupid for that and I care enough about my job to not make it less efficient

10

Other engineers don’t consider systems engineers to be “real” engineers, so they tend to use a lot of jargon to try and compensate.