I would talk to your boss. Only your boss should be telling you what to do. You don’t have to “tattle” on the guy or anything. Just casually mention his directives and see how your boss reacts. Or better yet, ask your boss for advice on how to handle the situation. “Uncle wants me to get everyone to do this and when I told him I would go about it this way, he kind of shot me down. What do you think I should do?”
You should demand super-strength or, at minimum, being able to shoot lasers from your eyes.
One year later:
Frylock’s boss: So, what do you think about Frylock?
The other boss: Smart guy, lot’s of good ideas, but seems to struggle to implement them. Seems reluctant to lead, needs his hand held all the time.
Frylock’s boss: Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Always coming to me asking me to take the decision for him. Won’t just get on and do it. I’m not sure the junior staff respect his authority.
The other boss: Shame really. Still, useful at his level? Or maybe one we can let go?
Frylock’s boss: Yeah. … Did you see the game last night?
[conversation continues]
Influence is about being effective without force. I would see these situations as opportunities to excel. Leadership can be about more than directing your own team - it can be influencing others to follow you.
…he sounds psychotic :mad:. You on the other hand seem to have the respect of your co-workers as being a benevolent team leader/co-worker, you engage with them, you listen & you respond accordingly with respect.
:eek:
Unfortunately you may be seen as a subversive in the bosses eyes in time as he will eventually realise that your interpersonal skills exceed his.
:smack:
All I would say is “watch your back”, in my own personal experiences, the moment the boss realises you can do the job better than him his fragile ego may break & it will be you his angst will be directed at along with any co-workers that he sees as being “conspiring” against him. He will try to divide & rule the team, he may even demand unreasonable compromises with threats of redundancy backed up by his own delusional accusations, misconduct, misappropriation of resources etc etc.
It could get messy & you may have to cover yourself by collecting supportive evidence (without breaching your own employment contract) in case of conflicts later on that may threaten your job.
:dubious:
You sound like the right sort of person for your job & I hope you will do well.
Best of luck…
So your options are to join a “get things done” train and get results? or to fall back on “it’s not in my job description?”
I know who I’d rather keep on. If organizations ran strictly according to org charts, nothing would ever get done. You need to think about influence and incentives, and what you do have in your pocket to help get results. Of course you can’t do magic and you may have primary responsibilities to think about. But taking initiative, getting results and developing lateral relationships are exactly the traits people want in an employee.
Frylock, what you’re going through is pretty typical for middle managers, particularly those who are attempting to create change within an organization. You seem pretty conversant with the concepts of “soft power” including its limitations, but it seems to me your big problem right now is you feel as if you’re carrying those limitations on your back. You don’t need to do that. At the end of what’s probably gonna be a long winded post, I’ve some basic concrete suggestions that I hope will help you out.
Every manager who needs to get things done, as your VP colleague/would-be-mentor excels at, must deal with the same limitations of their authority. No one in a matrix organzation (most corporate structures) is given total authority to direct the work of every individual in the business unit or the division or the department. So what you must use instead is persuasion. The tools you’ll need in order to be an effective persuader are ones you probably already possess and can develop further. -You’ll need specific organizational knowledge, a specific and clear vision of the overall mission or objectives, and most of all a willingness to be ignored or abused or misapprehended by your colleagues over and over without giving up.
Organizational knowledge - Know the business processes through all of the departments and work groups you must deal with. Know your key coworkers and their nominal responsibilities (whatever affects their performance evals). Know as much process and equipment history within the organization as you can.
Vision - One hazard of being a guy with a good toolbox and an eye for problem solving is that everything starts to look like a job for Corporate Handyman. You may become very effective at fixing things only vaguely related to the core issue(s). If you aren’t clear about the mission, if you can’t draw a “10,000 foot view” of whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, you’ll find it hard to coordinate even your direct reports, much less a disparate group scattered through multiple departments and disciplines.
Not giving up - Here’s where the meat lies in soft leadership. Your colleague is effective because of this one, guaranteed, even if his “pestering” takes the form of overstepping his own authority (it doesn’t have to). The techniques are really simple, if you have the knowledge and clear vision noted above:
Interact pragmatically wherever you need to. What I mean by pragmatically is to use your knowledge of coworkers and business processes to match their individual performance goals with your objectives in order to move your mission forward. Just because your particular fence needs whitewashing (literary reference/metaphor alert) doesn’t mean Joe the Purchaser will feel a need to source brushes, buckets and paint. One way of persuading Joe to buy, or Jack and Jeff to schedule floorspace and provide labor, is to relate the whitewashed fence to their individual and department goals so that it’s an accomplishment which also moves their particular missions as well as yours.
Document and store every relevant interaction you have while trying to implement the mission, whether it’s dealing with vendors, customers, colleagues or [especially] higher ups in the chain of command. This gives you the ability to follow up on requests, accurately review decisions and agreements, prove consensus (which is often fleeting in a dynamic org) and to otherwise effect the soft skills of coordination and facilitation. If the interaction was not already documented through electronic means or formal record keeping, follow up with a written summary to those who were involved and any appropriate peripheral individuals. Email is perfect for this purpose. Your communications go through a server and are separately archivable and retrievable, although you’ll want to archive everything on your own discrete and personally accessible device - not a cloud or any remote archiving. (I always kept a CYA flash drive. My wife calls hers a “chicken file” meaning it’s stuff she’s afraid to permanently delete, but it serves the same purpose.)
In your case, Frylock, I think this will give you a reminder of your own effectiveness, and a means to demonstrate that to others when needed. Might get the monkey off your back regarding limitations of authority. At minimum, you’ll get to show a consistent series of small victories with each interaction, even if some of them only serve to more clearly define the disagreements and failures within the organization.
Keep a list, even if it’s only for your personal use, of every action item that results from your soft leadership activities. Make sure that each action item is linked to a responsible entity (preferably an individual but it could be a specific work group), that it’s been agreed to and documented, and that there’s a clear follow up process to keep the action alive until it’s completed. This will allow you to remind, pester, bully (in a very soft and appropriate manner of course 
) the responsible parties.
Go ahead and get pissed off privately when these people have forgotten the agreement or openly reneged or misunderstood the clear and simple objectives or stormed off/transferred/quit/got fired. Brush yourself off, grit your teeth and persist. Interact again, pragmatically. Use your awesome documentation to remind, pester, bully. Repeat as necessary.
Good luck and have fun storming the castle.
I don’t see the OP saying the latter, though. He isn’t anyone’s boss, so his preference is to go with a less control and command leadership strategy. If he’s effective with this strategy, then that means he is doing what he should. Control-and-command Uncle is trying to dictate what his leadership style should be, and it’s valid of him to be bothered by that.
I’m in a similar position as the OP. A lot of my work involves leading folks who are actual lateral to me in the hierarchy. Sure, I could boss them around because the Director has given me implicit permission to do so, but issuing commands is not my preferred method of getting stuff done. If someone resists me, the worst consequence in my pocket is to snitch on them and who in the hell wants to use that as a threat? I can’t rate them down on the performance appraisal, I can’t discipline them, and I can’t re-assign them to other projects.
Since they know and I know that I have no real authority over them, I don’t pretend as if I do. In practice, what this means is that I do more “proposing” than commanding, and I choose to appeal to their values rather than flex my (imaginary) power. This strategy has worked, and that’s all that matters to me.
Frylock’s boss: Waitaminute, hold up. Did you just say lots with an apostrophe? Clean out your desk. (picks up phone, punches in Frylock’s extension) Frylock? A new position just opened up; you interested?
…now I really want a bag of m&m’s…
-Tom Stoppard
nvm
There’s a lot of wisdom in this thread and I appreciate it.
Frylock: Your damned right I do! Oh shit.
Unless you work with a bunch of good-for-nothing unprofessional shits, one way to get buy-in from lateral co-workers is to explain the project and why it and its goals are important, and then explain their role in that. Works well for me- at worst, I get some hedging based on prioritization and/or being pushed up to their managers for approval. As often as not, they realize we’re all on the same team and pitch in with a surprising amount of enthusiasm and professionalism.
Big if.
This sounds good in theory. But in practice–especially in gubmint work–frequently everyone knows the project and the goals are absolute bullshit. You know it. The people you’re trying to cajole know it. Sometimes even the boss knows it too, but of course won’t say so.
Which is why it is often more effective avoiding aligning yourself with management when you’re not management and everyone knows it. When I’m trying to get my coworkers to do something, it’s helpful to be able to say, “Look. I hate this shit too, but management isn’t budging on this. So we need to just suck it up and do our best, man. I’m in the same bind as you. But I think if we do X, Y, and Z, we’ll be alright.” Explaining the project and its goals is something that bosses do well, but fed-up underlings are rarely in the mood to hear.
It also depends on how the organization is structured. I don’t see most of the people I have to cajole because I’m in central office and they’re scattered all over in regional offices. They don’t know me personally, nor me them. They see themselves as being in the “trenches”, in the “real world”, whereas I’m in the “ivory tower” where all the crazy pies-in-the-sky are baked. Because of this, I already know that whatever proposal I bring to my coworkers, their first instinct will be to say no and probably roll their eyes (which I can’t see over the phone). So I have to take a less dominant approach to get buy-in from them. I haven’t failed yet.
I’m the guy who told them what to do and I stated that I would own that decision and any failure that came with it. They knew me and knew that I would take responsibility.
I knew that the Veep who sent me on the mission would step up and defend me.
It really wasn’t much of a risk on their part, or mine for that matter.
That seems strange to me. If I were the guy in charge, and I asked those people why they did something, and they pointed at someone lateral and said “because he told us to,” and it all turned out to go wrong, I might be aggravated at you (the guy who told them to) but I wouldn’t care if you “stepped up to take responsibility”–I’d be equally aggravated at them, because they’re the ones with the actual formal responsibility to make the decision.
But if the guy in charge delegated authority to you, he can’t be angry when his underlings follow your instructions.
Where is your boss in all of this? This detail is key to how you should be dealing with others. If your co-workers’ boss expects them to follow your lead, then you’re working with some power. If your boss is expecting you to act as an extension of herself/himself, then this also means you have power. Hopefully both expectations have been communicated to you and everyone else, because it’ll help minimize stress and confusion regarding your role. If they haven’t been communicated and/or you’re not sure what your boss’s expectations are, you need to seek clarification.