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How Can I Succeed Working Under Poor Leadership?
In thirty years of teaching leadership conferences, I’ve heard one question more than any other. How do I work with a bad leader? People struggle working for those who aren’t any good as leaders, or working with leaders less talented than they are. It’s a source of endless frustration. Everything rises and falls on leadership. If you work for a bad leader, you probably feel like it mostly falls… on you!
In this chapter I discuss this issue. I give a strategy for finding success when dealing with a leader who’s difficult to work with. My assumption going in is that you’ve already tried to be cooperative and work things out with him or her. The process I share is designed to force the issue. And I’ll be very candid with you. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. You have no control over that. You can only control what you do, and how you respond. Wayne W. Dyer says, “How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.”
“How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.”
—Wayne W. Dyer
If everything goes well, you’ve made a tremendous breakthrough. If things don’t go the way you hoped or planned, it may be time to move on. If you decide to stay and try to make the best of the situation, I provide a few strategies for the most common problems related to difficult leaders. You’ll find those later in this chapter.
I believe leaders are responsible for who and what they lead. Bad bosses often shirk their responsibilities and try to place them on the follower—on you—and you end up carrying the load. Whenever this happens, as far as it’s possible, you should attempt to ask questions of your leader in such a way that the responsibility goes back on his or her shoulders where it belongs.
1. How Can You Succeed with a Leader Who Is Difficult to Work With?
There are as many kinds of bad leaders as there are kinds of people in the world, and they create many different kinds of difficulty. But the outcome of their leadership is always the same. The people under them suffer and so does the organization.
Though each problem is unique, the process for trying to reach a positive solution is similar in nearly all circumstances. If you are working for a bad or difficult leader, and you intend to try to improve the situation, you need to do your homework and go through a deliberate process to seek resolution. This will increase your chances for a positive outcome. However, you need to go into the process with realistic expectations. Many poor leaders do not respond well to having their methods questioned. So part of what you will be doing is preparing yourself for what you will do if it doesn’t go well.
That doesn’t mean you should shrink from the task, especially if interaction with your leader is causing a violation of your values, the erosion of your confidence, or the undermining of your ability to achieve success in your work. You need to move forward. Here is how I suggest you proceed:
1. Consider Whether You Might Actually Be the Problem
It’s often easy to point out all the things that someone else is doing wrong, but when we do that, we sometimes neglect to examine ourselves to see what we are doing wrong. As I’ve mentioned before, the number one challenge I face as a leader is leading myself.
Someone once said, “Open minds lead to open doors.” If I want to try to solve a problem with someone else, I need to first own up to my part in it and work to fix it. So before you start looking at what’s wrong with your leader, first determine what’s wrong with you.
2. Determine Whether You Have Specific Evidence to Support Your Opinion
Statesman-philanthropist Bernard Baruch said, “Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” Before you decide to meet with your leader, you need to be sure the conflict or problem you see is based on solid evidence—not merely your feelings, not hearsay from someone else, not conjecture. Exactly what actions has your leader taken that are wrong? What specific words did you hear your leader say that were offensive or derogatory? Be specific. If you can’t be specific, you may be wrong in your assessment of the situation.
Even if you can cite specifics, try to examine them rationally, without emotion. The great Roman orator Cicero observed, “So near is the line between falsehood and truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.”
3. Assess Your Influence and Credibility with Your Leader
You can be right and have all your facts lined up, but if you have no influence with your leader, you may not get anywhere. Credibility opens the door to communication, and its lack closes it. As Neil Postman observed, “The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition.” So even if what you say is correct, if you have little credibility in the eyes of your leader, the perception may be that your observations have no truth.
“The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition.”
—Neil Postman
For that reason, before you try to do anything to address the issue, you need to figure out where you stand with him or her. What kind of clout do you have? Hotel executive Maria Razumich-Zec says, “Your reputation and integrity are everything. Follow through on what you say you’re going to do. Your credibility can only be built over time, and it is built from the history of your words and actions.”
If you’re not sure where you stand, talk to your coworkers. Ask them how much weight they think your words carry with the boss. If you have some degree of credibility, your leader might be willing to listen when you have difficult or negative things to say.
4. Think Through Every Possible Outcome
When most people are unhappy with their leader and their situation at work, they go to their coworkers to complain. By planning to talk to your leader instead, you are trying to do the right thing. But you should have the discussion with your leader only if you are willing to accept the outcome. That means you need to take the time to think about all the different responses your leader might give you and determine what you would do in every instance.
Author and philosopher Brand Blanshard shared his steps for thinking through a problem. You might want to try them:
The first step is to make the problem specific. The second step is to form theories freely of how to rid yourself of that burden. The third step is to develop in foresight the consequences of your proposals. The fourth and final step is to compare the consequences of your proposals to see which is best in the light of your scheme in life as a whole. Whether you choose a vacation or a spouse, a party or a candidate, a cause to contribute to or a creed to live by—think!
Blanshard’s steps assume that you will be making all the decisions, which won’t be true in your case. You will have no control over how your leader reacts. President Abraham Lincoln said, “When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say—and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.” That’s probably a good rule of thumb. If you put in the time, think things through, anticipate the possible reactions of your leader, and know what you will do in any given situation, you are as prepared as you can be.
5. Make a Decision to Act
At this point you have a decision to make. To do things the right way, you need to either take action or accept your situation as it is. If you decide not to take action, move on and don’t say anything negative to others about your situation. Never complain about what you allow. If you do, that puts you in the wrong. If you are in a situation that’s bad for you, you need to act. Just remember, as Jules Ellinger said, “There has never been a statue erected to the memory of someone who left well enough alone.”
“There has never been a statue erected to the memory of someone who left well enough alone.”
—Jules Ellinger
6. Ask to Speak with Your Leader Privately
One of the worst mistakes you can make with difficult leaders is to criticize them or call them out publicly. That always turns into a lose-lose proposition. Just as you would hope that your leader would take you aside to share criticism, you should do the same with him or her.
7. Meet, Outline Your Complaint, and Seek a Collaborative Solution
When you meet with your leader, your goal should not be to vent or get even. The point is not to complain. The point is to seek a positive resolution. Present your evidence in a way that is as positive, non-threatening, and non-accusatory as possible. Explain why you find it difficult to work and get your job done, and ask if there is anything that you and your leader can do to resolve the situation and work together more positively.
If you are honest, yet treat your leader with respect, at the end of the discussion you can walk away from the meeting with your integrity intact, no matter what the outcome is. Hopefully you and your leader will be able to agree upon a course of action that will serve both of you well. If your leader refuses to accept responsibility, becomes defensive, or proposes something you’re not sure you can agree to, ask for time to think it over. You can always meet again later to try again for a positive solution. If he or she suggests something that you know is good and right, that’s great. Move forward with it. As pioneer automaker Henry Ford said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
8. Determine Whether You Should Stay or It’s Time to Move On
You will have to make a decision after you meet with your leader. Will you stay or will you go? Maybe your leader says he will change. If that turns out to be true, great. Maybe he says he will not change. Are you willing to live with that? Maybe the conversation you had with your leader did greater damage to the relationship. As someone once said, “Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it is better to leave them broken than to hurt yourself trying to put them back together.” In the end you may not be able to change the people around you, but you can change the people you choose to be around.
If you’re still having a hard time trying to decide whether to stay or go, ask yourself this question: if I weren’t already working here, knowing what I know now, would I want to become part of this organization? If the answer is no, it’s time to go. If the answer is “I don’t know,” ask yourself again in six months. If the answer is yes, stay and learn how to work with your leader.
9. If You Decide You Can Stay, Give Your Best and Publicly Support Your Leader
If you think that you might want to stay and keep working with your leader, you need to ask yourself two crucial questions:
Will I be able to add value?
Will I be able to stay true to myself?
If you cannot answer yes to both of those questions, it would be better for you to leave. But if you can add value and stay true to yourself, you need to publicly support your leader. Stay quiet about the negative things you know about him or her. When you’re tempted to say something negative, say something nice instead. And if you need to discuss a problem or address a difficulty, do it behind closed doors. You should never do anything that compromises your integrity, but you need to remain supportive after the discussion. NFL coach Vince Lombardi pointed out, “Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a company work, a civilization work.” If you’re not supporting the team with your individual effort, you’re hurting the team.
For most of my career, I was the top leader in an organization. That didn’t always mean I was the greatest influencer, but it did mean that I didn’t have a positional boss directing me in my work. The churches belonged to a larger entity, a denomination, but the local churches I led were pretty autonomous.
About ten years into my career, I wanted to make a greater impact on more leaders, so I decided to leave the local church I was leading and work for the denomination at its headquarters. In the corporate world, that’s like a person who owns a restaurant franchise selling his restaurant and going to work for the parent corporation.
I did it because I wanted to train and affect leaders beyond my own local church, and I thought this was the best way to do it. What I hadn’t realized was that I would feel restricted working in just one denomination. And I was reporting to someone who wasn’t a good leader. He thought like a manager or bureaucrat, not an entrepreneur or leader. It was not a good fit for me, and I realized it pretty quickly.
I spent most of my time out in the field training leaders, but I still had to answer to this leader, and we were on totally different pages most of the time. So I made an appointment to meet with him and discuss the issues. After the meeting, I realized my time there needed to come to an end. Having him as my direct leader wasn’t going to work.
I worked in that position for eighteen months. After realizing I needed to make a change, whenever there was a problem, I went to him privately to discuss it, and I tried to work with him as much as I could. Meanwhile I looked for the right opportunity elsewhere. But I never criticized him to others. In fact, in the thirty-five years since I left, this is the first time I’ve talked about it publicly.
2. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Doesn’t Like You?
It’s difficult to work with someone you think doesn’t like you, especially when it’s your leader. Most people don’t respond to it well. They often do one of the following:
• Hide from the person: Many people go into avoidance mode. The good news is that there isn’t direct conflict. The bad news is that when we spend our energy hiding, we lose momentum.
• Hinder the person: Another common response is to become passive-aggressive. We don’t do anything directly destructive. We just make sure not to be very cooperative. The problem with this is it hurts the team and causes us to be unfocused.
• Harm the person: The worst of all responses is to try to punish or harm the person who doesn’t like us. That causes us to lose integrity.
Instead you need to take the high road. You cannot control your leader’s response to you. He or she may never love working with you. But you can do everything in your power to make sure that you are not the cause of the problem. You do that by…
Processing Your Emotions
Over time, if your negative emotions are left unchecked and allowed to brew, they will overflow into every area of your working—and maybe also your private—life. These negative emotions can influence our decision making, taint how we view relationships, and affect how we lead our people. For that reason we need to feel our emotions regularly. We must acknowledge how we feel, work through any hurt feelings, and move on. Otherwise we’re likely to hold a grudge.
Looking for Common Ground
Everyone sees the world from their own unique perspective. Terry Felber, author of Am I Making Myself Clear? wrote, “If you can learn to pinpoint how those around you experience the world, and really try to experience the same world they do, you’ll be amazed at how effective your communication will become.”
Whenever and wherever possible, look for points of agreement with your leader. And when you find them, focus on those things you have in common rather than the differences that set you apart. If you are united in a common goal, start there.
Being Consistently Pleasant
Noted English hostess Lady Dorothy Nevill observed, “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” That means being consistently pleasant all the time.
Have you ever heard the phrase “Kill them with kindness”? People often soften if you stay constant when they are not—when you are sincere, kind, helpful, and pleasant despite their choices and behavior. And remember, as poet Kahlil Gibran asserted, “Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
—Kahlil Gibran
Solving Problems
One of the best ways to endear yourself to a leader is to be a good problem solver. It’s easy to see and point out problems. It’s much more difficult—and valuable—to offer and implement solutions. Adding value to others always works to your advantage. If you increase your value by becoming good at offering and implementing solutions, it will make your boss’s job easier, and his or her attitude toward you might soften.
Going the Extra Mile
Film director William C. de Mille quipped, “I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew, and then chew it.” If you want to please people, go above and beyond expectations. Most of the differences between average and top people can be explained in three words: “and then some.” If you do your job and then some, people will be drawn to you, maybe even your boss.
Sometimes people dislike another person without good reasons. That could be the case with you and your leader. All you can do is try to connect on common ground and be a great employee. It’s difficult to dislike someone who consistently treats people with kindness, does the job well, and goes above and beyond what is expected. If you do all those things and your leader still doesn’t like you, you can take comfort in knowing that you are probably not the cause of the problem.
3. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Lacks Vision?
CEO coach Mike Myatt says, “After character, the ability to create, articulate, evangelize, and execute on your vision is what will make or break you as a leader.” That’s why it’s so difficult to work with a leader who lacks vision. Much dissatisfaction and discouragement are caused by absence of vision. Without it, leaders lack the ability to convey motivation, drive, and purpose to their people.
If you are going to stay and work under a leader who lacks vision, what can you do?
Tap into the Organization’s Larger Vision
If you work for a larger organization in which your boss is only one leader of many, you can tap into the vision of the organization itself. When the vision of the organization is clear, the vision of any individual leader, team, or department within the organization should contribute to that larger vision anyway. It should work within that context.
How does your team or department support that larger vision of the organization? In what way does your team or department add the most value? How can you advance the purpose of the organization in a significant way? How can you make it better?
Identify a Vision for the Organization and Share It with Your Leader
If you work in a smaller organization where your leader is the top leader, you may want to work at discovering and developing a vision for the organization that will help it succeed. Once you’ve done that, you can share it with your leader, and if your level of influence is strong, your leader might embrace it and buy into it.
If you do this, just be sure that the vision is consistent with the values and goals you know your leader possesses. If it’s not, your leader will probably not welcome it.
Develop Your Own Sense of Purpose
Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle asserted, “A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.” What a great image. Purpose gives you drive. It shows you a destination. It paints a picture of your future. It energizes you. And it makes obstacles and problems seem small in comparison to its importance.
You cannot allow your leader’s lack of vision to keep you from making progress in life. Connect with and develop your own purpose. As long as you are doing work consistent with it, you won’t be as bothered by your leader’s lack of vision for the organization. You will just need to be certain that you are doing what you were created to do.
Vision is critical to good leadership. I have yet to meet a great leader who lacks vision. In discussing CEOs, Mike Myatt says,
Leaders without vision will fail. Leaders who lack vision cannot inspire teams, motivate performance, or create sustainable value. Poor vision, tunnel vision, vision that is fickle, or a non-existent vision will cause leaders to fail. A leader’s job is to align the organization around a clear and achievable vision. This cannot occur when the blind lead the blind.”27
I absolutely agree that any organization whose top organization lacks vision is in trouble. Farther down the leadership chain, is it ideal to have leaders without vision? No. But it is possible for someone to lead up in the organization to influence a leader without vision. It isn’t easy, but it is possible.
4. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Is Indecisive and Inconsistent?
Psychologist William James said, “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” I might have to disagree with that. I believe the people who have that indecisive human being as their leader and have to work for him are at least equally miserable.
Leaders who cannot make decisions are like lobsters, according to author and physician Orison Swett Marden. He wrote,
A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.
If you can see solutions within arm’s reach, yet your leader prevents you from implementing them, you will be continually frustrated. What can you do to deal with this situation?
Ask Permission to Make the Decisions
Leadership decisions should always be made at the lowest possible level. The people on the front lines usually know the problems and solutions best. They are also closest to the problems and can usually act quickly. So if you know what decisions should be made, ask your leaders if they are willing to let you make them. If they seem unsure, offer to start small with minor decisions that won’t make or break the team. In that way you can develop credibility and a positive track record. If they say yes and you’re willing to take responsibility for your own decisions and actions, the problem is solved.
Leadership decisions should always be made at the lowest possible level.
Offer to Help Your Leaders Process Decisions
If you are good at decision making and can see solutions readily, but your leaders don’t want to release you to act independently, offer to privately process decisions with them. Gather information and present it to them. Define each problem as specifically as you can. Offer a variety of solutions, taking into account their values, motivations, priorities, and goals. Explain the implications of every decision as you see them. Then ask for a decision.
If they are unwilling to come to a conclusion, ask for feedback. Try to find which solutions they prefer and which they dismiss out of hand. In this way you can find out how they think and try to narrow down the options. If they still won’t make a decision, try to get them to commit to a deadline. Then circle back later to try to land the decision.
Ask What You Are to Do When a Decision Must Be Made
If you have leaders who will not allow you to either make the decisions or help them make them, your only course of action is to be very direct with them and privately ask the question, “What do you want me to do when a decision must be made but you aren’t making it?” Likewise, if you work with inconsistent leaders, you must ask a similar question when they change their minds: “Previously you decided that; how do you want me to proceed now that you’ve decided this?”
By asking these questions, you are putting the ball back in your leaders’ court where it belongs. They are the ones responsible for making decisions. But if they don’t take responsibility, at least you have a course of action that they have asked you to take in those situations, and when they change their minds again, you can say with integrity, “The last time we talked, you said you wanted me to do this, and that’s what I’ve done.”
5. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Has Attitude and Character Problems?
One of the great dangers in working for leaders who have attitude and character problems is that they are continually trying to drag you down to wherever they are. Bad attitudes are contagious. It’s difficult to remain positive when people around you are continually negative. And people who cheat or cut corners in their lives will inevitably ask you to do the same, and they won’t want to take no for an answer when you refuse to share their methods.
Leaders with these kinds of issues are like crabs in a bucket. If you’ve ever caught crabs or seen someone else do it, you know that if you toss two crabs in a bucket, you never have to worry about either one of them getting away from you. The crabs are so focused on dragging one another down that they never think of getting out of the bucket themselves. That’s the way it will probably feel to you in that environment. It will be a constant struggle for you to retain a positive attitude and maintain your values.
If you are determined to stay in such an environment, the best thing you can try to do is lift people to a higher level. Here’s how you can do that:
Live on a Higher Level Yourself
You don’t want to allow others’ compromises to influence you to compromise your own values. But that alone is not enough. One of your goals as a leader and person should always be to be a positive influence on others in the critical areas of attitude and character. If your leaders aren’t strong in these areas, try to lead up and help them as well as your peers and those you lead.
The way to start doing that is by holding yourself to the highest possible standard. You cannot take people where you haven’t been. As you gain a reputation for being positive and reliable by maintaining high standards for yourself, your credibility will increase, and so will your influence. You may have opportunities to help others realize there’s a better way to do things and to make better choices.
Separate Yourself from Negative Influences as Much as Possible
Trying to help others to be positive and honest using influence alone doesn’t always work. People have been given free will and make their own choices in life. If you’ve done your best to help your leaders but you start to feel their influence negatively affecting your attitude or values, separate yourself from them as much as you can. If time and distance don’t seem to be helping, consider leaving your position. No job is worth trading your integrity for.
Put Things in Writing Whenever Possible
To a great extent you can avoid a bad attitude. However, you need to protect yourself from someone who has no integrity. As I’ve already discussed, the best way to do that is to leave so you don’t become party to anything unethical. But if you can’t leave right away or if you need to stay for some reason, put as much communication as you can in writing. You will want to be able to show evidence of your right-doing if at some point your boss is accused of wrongdoing.
6. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Acts Like a Bully?
I read in Forbes that a 2010 survey conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute reports that 35 percent of the American work force has experienced “repeated mistreatment by one or more employees that takes the form of verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, humiliation, or sabotage of work performance.” Approximately 72 percent of those bullies are bosses.28 That’s a huge number, and it’s an indication that many people who hold leadership positions or titles don’t understand how good leadership works. It’s based on invitation, not intimidation.
Having bosses who act like bullies makes life difficult. Nobody likes to feel pushed around. If you decide to stay in such an environment, your best bet is to try to let what they say roll off you like water off a duck’s back. Don’t buy into what they’re selling. That’s not going to be easy, so here are some suggestions to help you:
1. Be Confident in Your Own Value
Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Leaders cannot devalue you without your permission. Unpleasant bosses can say anything they want to you or about you, but if it isn’t true, you don’t need to buy into it. You prevent that by seeing the value in yourself and being confident in it.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
You have value. Every person does. You have talents and skills that can add value to others. You have resources and opportunities that no one else has. You have intrinsic value simply because you are a human being. You need to own these things. Philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
Even if you do everything right, there’s no guarantee that others won’t treat you wrong. People can decide they don’t like you with no legitimate reason. You can’t control that. Instead be confident and think of the words of Winston Churchill, who was prime minister of Great Britain during World War II: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” Develop thick skin, and your critics won’t bother you as much.
2. Do Not Accept Blame That Doesn’t Belong to You
Author and lecturer John Killinger tells a story about a baseball manager for a minor-league team who was frustrated by the poor play of his center fielder. Finally, in disgust, he marched into center field, told the player he was out of the game, and took his place himself.
The first ball that came his way took a bad hop and hit him in the mouth. The next was a high fly ball, which he lost in the sun. It hit him in the forehead. The third ball was a sharp line drive that he charged, arms stretched forward to catch it; he stumbled and the ball hit him in the eye.
When the inning was finally over, he ran to the dugout, grabbed his center fielder by the uniform, and shouted, “You idiot! You’ve got center field so messed up that even I can’t do a thing with it!”
Bullies are always looking for someone to blame. Don’t allow them to blame you for things you’re not responsible for. If something is your fault, own up to it. If it’s not, decline to take the blame.
3. Refuse to Be a Victim
One of the reasons some people allow themselves to be bullied is that they feel powerless to do anything about what’s happening to them; they believe that they’re victims. It’s important for you not to allow yourself to think that way. You can’t develop a victim’s mind-set and be successful.
First lady Michelle Obama explained, “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.”
If you know who you are and you take a proactive approach to life, you are less likely to feel like a victim. You can’t do everything, but you can do some things. You can’t prevent others from treating you poorly, but you can decide how you will respond.
Albert Ellis asserted, “By not caring too much about what people think, I’m able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.” That is your goal.
7. How Would You Work with a Difficult Leader Who Always Plays It Safe?
Management expert Peter Drucker said, “It’s easier for companies to come up with new ideas than to let go of old ones.” Why is that? Fear. Many people are afraid of change, of risk, of failure. They don’t want to let go of the known because they fear the unknown.
I once saw an article in the Saturday Evening Post that talked about fear. It said that many people fear dying in a plane crash, yet the odds against that happening are 250,000 to one. A person is more likely to be kicked to death by a donkey than to die in a plane crash. People are also afraid of being murdered, yet a person is eight times more likely to die while playing a sport than to be shot by a stranger. People fear dying on the operating table during surgery, yet they are twenty times more likely to die in an automobile accident. At the same time, millions of people hope and pray they will win the lottery. The truth is that they are three times more likely to be struck by lightning.
People’s fears and worries are often overblown. Many times they’re not based in reality. Yet these worries stop them from being productive and successful just the same. If you have leaders who always play it safe, you may be able to help them. Try doing the following:
Put Yourself in Their Shoes
The story goes that when Michael Faraday invented the first electric motor, he wanted the interest and backing of the British prime minister, William Gladstone. So Faraday took a simple model comprised of a little wire revolving around a magnet to the statesman and showed it to him. Gladstone showed little interest and asked, “What good is it?”
Thinking quickly, the inventor responded, “Someday you will be able to tax it.” Faraday didn’t try to explain the device. He didn’t try to persuade Gladstone. He simply put himself in his questioner’s shoes. And it paid off. He received the backing he desired.
If you want to try to put yourself into your leaders’ shoes, ask yourself three questions:
• Where have they been? This relates to their experiences. What is their background? What have they done in the past? What kinds of things have happened to them that may be causing them to be afraid of change?
• What do they feel? This relates to their emotions. Most people who won’t take risks are afraid. Try to find out not only how they feel but how they process their emotions and deal with things like stress.
• What do they want? This relates to expectations. What really matters to them in life? What are their hopes and dreams? My friend Zig Ziglar said, “You can get anything in life you want, if you help enough people get what they want.” If you know what they want and help them get it, maybe you’ll get what you want too.
Sales expert Tom Hopkins, who wrote How to Master the Art of Selling, advises that if you want to close a deal, you must see through the eyes of the client. The same is true when you’re working for weak leaders. If you want to understand them and work with them, you must see things from their perspective. That’s the best way to help them and yourself.
Acknowledge Their Feelings
Leaders who avoid risk do so generally because they do not have the confidence to believe in their own success. Don’t dismiss those feelings of fear and inadequacy. Instead acknowledge them. And as far as you are able, help them to achieve small wins. This can help them build their confidence.
Help Them Take Action
Sometimes what people need are facts. They need to see the greater value of a specific change. Yes, all of us can be hurt. All of us can and at times will fail. But progress always takes risk. Help your leaders weigh the potential gains and losses of taking action against the potential gains and losses of not taking it. If you can take the worst, take the risk. As General George S. Patton said, “A good plan vigorously executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
8. If Someone Who Had a Higher Position than You Did Not Have Good Leadership Skills, How Would You Go About Running the Organization in a Respectful Way?
Often people who work for bosses with poor leadership skills try to fight the situation. That’s an approach that is not likely to work. Instead they need to try to help their bosses to succeed, because if we want to be successful, we must try to help others to succeed. We can’t undermine our leaders and expect our team to be successful. And if they’re smart, they will understand that they cannot make it without us. We need each other.
1. Understand Your Leader
When people have asked me about working for poor leaders, I often find that they don’t really know those leaders. They are so preoccupied by what their leaders aren’t doing right that they don’t even try to find out who they are. That’s a mistake. To help yourself, you need to help them. To help them, you need to know what they care about.
As you get to know your leaders and endeavor to help them, you will start to look at them as people first and leaders second. Your communication with them will improve. So will your connection. You may even begin to enjoy working together.
When we do our own work and follow through successfully in our assignments, we place ourselves in a position for promotion. When we contribute to the success of our bosses, they are put in a position to rise. As they do, guess whom they want to bring along with them? The people who help them win. As John Mason says, “Making others better is a boomerang.”
2. Understand Your Support Role
Although your leadership skills may be greater than those of the people you work for, if you want to be successful, you have to play your part. You’ve been hired to play a supporting role. Do your best to fulfill it with excellence.
3. Bloom Where You’re Planted
Few things impress leaders, whether they are strong or weak, like a worker who is both a starter and a finisher. If you have initiative and are a self-starter, doing your work with joy, everyone will want to work with you. If you follow through on tasks and commitments, people will give you greater and greater responsibilities. The measure of a person is not what he or she says in the staff meeting, but rather what he or she does when the meeting is over.
4. Rise Above Others with a Right Attitude
It’s hard for most people who work for weak leaders to maintain a great attitude. If you can be positive and supportive while all those around you are negative or complain, you will stand out and people will be drawn to you. Remember, good employees aren’t people with a certain set of circumstances; they are people with a certain set of attitudes.
5. Succeed on Their Terms
When you’re working in the middle of an organization with leaders above you, your success usually takes place on someone else’s terms. You are not in charge of the definition of success. You cannot rewrite the rules of the game. The pathway to success has been set by others. The only thing you can do is succeed on the terms of others. This idea may frustrate you, but the reality is that everyone is accountable to someone and must succeed on others’ terms.
Life’s greatest rewards come from your inner self, from the choices you make, from how you decide to live under whatever circumstances you find yourself in.
In the end, the only thing you can do is lead your life. If you don’t, others will, by determining what will happen to you. Life’s greatest rewards come from your inner self, from the choices you make, from how you decide to live under whatever circumstances you find yourself in.