Five Ways A Weak Manager Will Set You Up To Fail

Most of us grew up drinking toxic lemonade.

We were not taught to pay attention to our five senses, but now we are learning that we must! We were taught to respect authority more than our own bodies. The training started when we were tiny kids.

We can look back now and see how many destructive things we learned from our elders. With luck we learned more valuable lessons, too!

Now we know that fear and trust are the two energy fields that flow through any workplace. If you’re good enough at your job or you catch the attention of higher-ups, a fearful manager above you won’t like it. He or she will make it very hard for you to succeed — or at least they’ll try.

You have a choice when you’re working under a fearful manager. You can jolly him or her along and help the fearful one become less skittish. You can partner up with him or her and let your manager see that you are happy to make him or her look good along the way to growing your flame.

If you don’t like that plan, you can leave the fearful manager and go to work for someone else — or go to work for yourself!

Once a fearful manager decides you are too hot to handle, he or she will try to trip you up. They’ll set you up to fail. Here are five ways your fearful manager might go about their plan to “cut you down to size:”

They’ll give you “dog” projects that are bound to fail and will tie you up for months

For years people have said “If they change your title to ‘Special Projects Manager’ you know it’s time to go.”

Your boss doesn’t have to give you a title with ‘Special Projects’ in it for you to get the message. You can tell where the energy is flowing in your organization.

You know which projects and initiatives are the most closely tied to the organization’s future, and which ones its leaders care about. When your manager decides to neutralize your energy, he or she will stick you on a project that no one cares about and that will take you out of circulation for months.

Should you take on the dog project to be a good citizen? You can take it on and launch a job search, internally and externally. Look at it this way: a waste of resources is a bad business decision and a disservice to shareholders. If your talents are being wasted, don’t stand by and be a party to that crime!

photo by Molly Campbell

They’ll restrict your access to people outside your department

We got a call from Martha, an HR person with a big flame. Martha is dragging her company into the 21st century bit by hit. Her CEO loves her energy and ability to get things done. However, Martha doesn’t report to the CEO.

She reports to the CFO, who isn’t as comfortable with Martha’s culture-building activities as he could be.

Martha’s CFO boss told her “Why don’t you go through me when you need something from one of the executives here?” Martha was horrified, but she kept her cool. She said “What would be the business benefit of that process? I have never heard of a situation where an HR Manager goes through her boss to communicate with her internal clients.”

The CFO was acting out of fear, of course. He had never thought about an HR Manager having internal clients. He backed off. He said “Well, let’s keep talking about it” and Martha kept up her campaign to humanize her workplace. A month later the goofy “go through me” idea was forgotten, but only because Martha made it clear in her body language and her voice that she is not someone you can push around.

They’ll assign you impossible goals

Every aspect of a job is negotiable. That is true whether you’re working the drive-up window at Burger King or an executive-level position. If your goals are so out of reach that you don’t stand a chance at hitting them, you have to say something.

Boss: So, here are your goals. You have to double inventory turns this quarter and double them again next quarter.

You: Great. So, where do these goals come from? What is the  logic behind them?

Boss: I set these goals. Next question?

You: It would be irresponsible of me not to let you know that the goals are impossible. They are not tied to any actions that are within our capability right now. I can share with you a plan for getting us to these goals but I can’t sign on to hit them when I know that we can’t — no organization could, with our resources and given our current situation.