Working for a Bad Manager Exposed My Own Biggest Leadership Flaws
I was surprised when it came out of my mouth: “Just do it. We need to finish by 10 a.m. no matter what.”
Hmmm…that’s not something I would typically tell one of my employees. Why the hell did I say that?
My retail store had just received a massive truckload of products that had to be unloaded and stocked ASAP. As the assistant store manager, my job was to ensure that my 50-person logistics team packed the sales floor with Xboxes, video games, LEGO sets, and every other doorbuster item that would make deal-loving parents fight each other on Black Friday.
But as every retail manager knows, if there aren’t enough “payroll hours” to do the work required, life begins to get stressful.
If a store exceeds its payroll budget, the higher-ups lose their bonus checks. Mid-level managers get called on the carpet (and potentially lose their jobs). Employees lose shifts, which means they don’t have the money to pay bills.
In short, payroll is a massive deal for a retail store.
My store was currently over-spending our payroll allowance, so we were in crisis mode. And this particular morning, the truck from the distribution center was a doozy. We received enough toys to put Santa out of a job, which meant my team would need to spend more time than normal unloading and stocking everything. And more time meant more payroll hours.
I swung by my boss’s office to give her the initial report on the truck unload and to brainstorm ways we could minimize the payroll damage.
She was stressed (for good reason), and she barked that my team had to finish the truck unload by 10 a.m. — no questions asked.
In my head, I knew that 10 a.m. was nearly impossible. Based on the size of the truck, our logistics tool estimated that we’d wrap up closer to 11:30 or noon. But I had my marching orders, and I carried them into battle.
A few minutes later, I passed along the message to my team: we had to be wrapped up by 10 a.m. Someone spoke up to say they didn’t think it was possible. My response? “Just do it. We need to finish by 10 a.m. no matter what.”
I immediately regretted what I said. I had turned into my boss.
My response contained zero empathy, zero room for further discussion, zero leeway for problem-solving and sharing ideas, and zero acknowledgment of the reality of the situation. And with that response, I sacrificed some of my credibility as well as my integrity.
The situation spotlighted several of my biggest leadership faults:
- I didn’t have the courage to challenge my boss and share the truth.
- I was more concerned with appeasing my boss than caring for my team.
- When times got hard, I was willing to mimic my boss’s harsh management style rather than trusting my own style of working alongside my team to solve problems together.
- I visibly wore my stress and passed it along to others.
Looking back, my mistake reminds me of these incisive lyrics from the old Linkin Park song “Figure.09”:
’Cause from the infinite words I can say I
Put all pain you gave to me on display
But didn’t realize instead of setting it free I
Took what I hated and made it a part of me
And now you’ve become a part of me
You’ll always be right here
You’ve become a part of me
…
Giving up a part of me
I’ve let myself become you
What SHOULD I have done in that situation?
First, I should have had an honest conversation with my boss.
I should have discussed the reality of the situation: 10 a.m. was unrealistic. In her book Fierce Conversations, author Susan Scott says there’s often a significant gap between the official truth assumed by a company’s upper management and the ground truth recognized by mid-level managers and front-line team members. She says a leader’s job is to interrogate reality and seek out the ground truth.
“Several years ago I was introduced to the military term ground truth, which refers to what’s actually happening on the ground versus the official tactics…Every day companies falter and fail because the difference between ground truth and the ‘official truth’ is significant…The official truth is available for general circulation and is viewed by most team members as propaganda. Ground truth is discussed around the water cooler, in the bathrooms, and in the parking lot, but it is seldom offered for public consumption and rarely shows up when you need it most — when the entire team is assembled to discuss how to introduce a new product or analyze the loss of a valuable customer and figure out how to prevent it from happening again.” -Susan Scott
Scott encourages leaders to ask themselves, “What are the leaders in my organization pretending not to know? What am I pretending not to know?”
In this situation, I was pretending not to know how long the truck unload would take. I naively hoped that if I just parroted what I heard from my boss (“10 a.m. or else”), the team would find a way to make it happen. But deep inside, I knew that wasn’t the case.
Second, I should have blocked my team from my boss’s frustration and stress.
The best managers are those who remove roadblocks from their teams (busywork, distractions, unnecessary meetings, and stress).
Instead of blocking the stress, I mirrored it. In doing so, I let down my team and gave them yet another thing to worry about during a busy day.
Third, I should have brought my team into the conversation to hear their ideas for solving the problem.
Here’s what that could have sounded like: “Team, we’re running low on payroll hours this month. I don’t want to have to cut everyone’s shifts later in the month, and I know you don’t want that either. Who has a creative idea for how we can finish this truck unload without staying until 11:30 a.m.?”
Several times in my life, I’ve had to re-learn the lesson that I’m not the smartest person in the room. Often, when I think there’s no good solution to a problem, someone offers an idea that I never considered.
Someone in my team could have had an excellent idea for how we could have completed the truck early that day, but I never heard it because I shut down the conversation.
To this day, I’m still ashamed of how I responded in that situation. Regardless, I learned a few valuable leadership lessons that day:
- Speak up on behalf of your team.
- Find and share the “ground truth” in tough situations.
- Don’t roll shit downhill. If, in a moment of stress, your boss gives you an unhelpful directive, don’t mirror that anxiety to your team.
- Beware that it’s easy to take on your manager’s best and worst qualities.
- Bring your team into the problem. They may be able to help you solve it.
How about you? Have you worked for a bad manager?
What did that experience teach you about your own leadership flaws?
