Back On Track: How to Handle A Boss Who Sidelines You
Something is amiss in your workplace. Your collegial relationship with your boss suddenly feels cold and you are excluded from high stakes office socializing and other critical projects that you would have normally led in the past.
That voice in your head has evolved from, “You are just being paranoid,” to “Watch your back.” The question you need to answer is if your boss is sidelining you and why.
In my 30-year career as a management executive, several situations emerged where I pondered this question. Once my supervisor narrowed the scope of my role one month after a glowing performance review.
In a different role, the division CEO hosted frequent weekend gatherings with my male peers and their wives excluding me. Another manager was suddenly silent when I mentioned my home landscaping plans. Then he advised me to hold off on the work. I stewed about it and wondered what he meant for weeks.
In these moments, I questioned my standing and future with the organization. While I was flatfooted as to what to do earlier in my career, eventually I learned how to manage a boss, who sidelines me, with these four critical steps.
1. Reflect: Take stock starting with yourself. Are you doing your best to deliver your objectives and continuously improving? Perhaps you have plateaued and need to step it up. Seek out feedback from trusted colleagues that will tell you what you need to hear. There may be a valid performance gap that hasn’t been communicated to you, but there could also be a power issue with your boss. Research from Northwestern University shows that leaders motivated by power sometimes undermine and isolate their top performers when they fear they could be outshined. Knowing what you are dealing with can help determine your response.
2. Reframe: Use the setback to persevere with hope. Recognize that these experiences can take a toll on your confidence. Regardless of the reason, getting sidelined or excluded feels like rejection. It is critical to shift beyond the negative feeling and to build the resiliency to take action. Educator and consultant Angela Lee Duckworth says such grit is a predictor of success. Reframing helps us to concentrate on what we can control and focuses energy on moving forward.
3. Talk it out: Request a candid conversation to show commitment, gain feedback, know where you stand and rebuild trust. Ask yourself — what is the worst that can happen? While a tough talk could confirm your worse fears, it can also enable you to move on to what is next. Alternatively, you could get to a better relationship, meeting your own and your boss’ needs, address any misunderstandings, and increase your motivation. According to Dan Pink, author of Drive, gaining feedback helps us understand our progress, which inherently builds motivation and drive.
4. Decide: Assess your situation, the likelihood of change and your best alternatives. Get some distance to avoid a rash move. If change is less likely, determine if that is true of your manager or the whole company. Consider if you have accomplished what you wanted to in the role. Given the time already invested and your potential passion for the work, take the risks to understand and change your situation prior to exiting. Decide what it will take to shift from surviving to thriving and set about to make that happen. A recent Catalyst study found that high potential women and men who reported greater success in role negotiation also reported greater access to hot jobs, saw themselves as more innovative and more likely to remain with their current organization.
I later discovered my boss was in an unstable situation in the company. So when I took on more responsibility, her insecurity grew. I worked hard to collaborate and provide credit upward to lower the threat and reduce the zero-sum mindset. While we eventually got to a better place, I moved to a different role and boss about a year later.
When I faced exclusion from some social gatherings, I created other ways to connect with several peers on work projects where we connected through shared goals, interests, and work products. I realized the gender bias was deep rooted in the organizational dynamic and I elected to leave.
In the case of the unsolicited lawn advice, I finally found the courage and raised my concerns to my boss. When he realized his well-intended guidance made me a flight risk, he shared confidential news that my job was going to be eliminated leading to a relocation to a better job and location. I could have saved a lot of angst by pushing the topic a lot sooner.
In all scenarios, I found that accepting — not condoning — my situation helped me overcome the confidence slump to shift my mental energy towards action. I stayed in two of the three companies and learned that new actions, new bosses and a new company can usually get you off the sidelines and onto the playing field.
Ellen C. Taaffe is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of the Women’s Leadership Program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is a Corporate Board Director, Executive Leadership Coach and Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
