Sabotage Pattern #13: When You Disagree With Your Colleagues, Always Discuss It With Their Manager
Instead of solving the problems you have in a team and being open and honest about your concerns, but also receptive to what others have to say, solve these with the manager of those you disagree with.
Of course do this without telling anybody else that you have this problem. You can even pretend that you are listening but in fact be poisoning the culture and atmosphere. Doing this will not only impede progress, but will also deteriorate culture in the team quickly as people will stop trusting each other (he looks like a friend — but isn’t he talking to my manager?) and the rumor mill will spin up—taking the focus away from important things.
For you of course, especially in a traditional organization, this is a step towards promotion, as you are seen as the one who spotted a problem in the team and immediately went on to solve it. Immediately you are seen as the one who has situation firm in hands and clearly focuses on company goals.
A long time ago, we had a new manager coming into our organization. At that time, we’ve been thinking about doing some reorganization in the teams to smoothen communication and generally transform the silo-based approach into something more agile; with teams having the competency to deliver an end-to-end solution.
Problem was — this manager seemed to not like this idea. I ended up drawing numerous versions of organizational diagrams (both from the hierarchical standpoint and value-delivery standpoint), we held several meetings over a couple of weeks. Only after this effort I found out—through the superior of this manager who happened to be a friend of mine—that this manager actually has a problem with me, not with the suggested organization.
How did that feel? Dreadful. Even more dreadful because I did not know what the reason was or what have I done. My motivation fell down drastically (because of this lack of openness, because I imagined the hours of wasted work I could have spent on something else), and not event towards this manager. It fell down drastically towards the entire organization, even the parts that had nothing to do with the manager in question.
Recognition
- How many times are you getting “direct feedback” that is in fact indirect (your manager gives you feedback he got from someone else)?
- How much gossip is generally happening within the organization? How many times are people complaining (that is a weird sort of un-constructive feedback) about others without first discussing the issues with them?
Removal
- Don’t mistake “open” feedback (being honest and openly expressing issues) with “direct” feedback (talking directly to the person whom it concerns). If you don’t know how to give feedback, try using a feedback wrap.
- When thinking about giving feedback, always at first give the feedback directly to whoever is concerned.
- When you receive a feedback concerning any of your subordinates, first ask: “have you tried to solve it with them personally?” or “do you want me to mediate your in-person feedback session?”. Never just accept it and then send it on. You can use improvement dialogues to facilitate such conversations.
- If you receive indirect feedback, ask both your manager and the one giving the feedback that next time you’d welcome them to give you true direct feedback from which you can learn and improve.
