The Pinocchio

The Pinocchio Boss obscures the truth with smoke, evades it with half-truths, or lies outright. Working for one ought to qualify as torture under the Geneva Convention.

The first problem with Pinocchio Bosses is that you can’t do a good job with the incorrect information they provide. That’s fundamental. The second is more insidious – serious liars usually suspect others of lying in return. They seem to think, “I’d lie in this situation, so he must be lying.” The resulting breakdown in mutual trust makes the atmosphere toxic.

Sometimes Pinocchio’s motives aren’t so bad. All of us may shade the truth occasionally to avoid hurting someone but People Pleasers carry it to the extreme. They don’t want to give us bad news, so they deceive us. In the face of such excessive caring, I’m tempted to sing the Dixie Chick lyrics – “Let 'er rip, let it fly / I ain't about to bawl, and I ain't gonna die.” We can usually pry the supposedly hurtful truth out of People Pleasers by asking enough questions, pinning them down. But it’s work and so unnecessary.

Another Pinocchio category is the Insecures, who want to cover up their own ignorance or ineptitude with a lie. Since it’s their own feelings that are in danger, they are much harder to crack than People Pleasers. Getting to the truth requires independent investigation. One solution: if they cite regulation or policy, ask for the document that spells it out, explaining, “So I won’t be so foolish next time.” Other lies can be uncovered by finding counter-examples. e.g., “Smith was promoted without spending a year in a lower grade.” It’s also hard work but amazingly successful and won’t win you any friends.

I have met only three bosses who were shameless, Total Liars. Fortunately for me, they weren’t my bosses and I could usually observe from a safe distance. They lied because they had to win at any cost or just because they could. I once sat in a meeting in which Paul calmly denied saying something that everyone present had heard him say. After a failed attempt to shame him into admitting a mistake, we all just gazed at each other in wonder. He wasn’t even embarrassed by us all knowing he was a liar. Paul didn’t trust anyone else, either, constantly accusing others of fabrication. Paul destroyed morale in his department, drove away clients, and made work life miserable for anyone in the vicinity.

There is only one solution for Total Liars – get away. Get away quickly.

What other archetypes have you encountered? Share some stories.

The Undecider

Some people hate to make decisions. When asked to decide something, they may:

1.     Ask for more information, delaying the need to decide.

2.     Insist that the decision be endorsed by others, sharing the blame.

3.     Say that they’ll take it up with higher management, delegating upward.

4.     Say they’ll think about it, meaning it will be ignored as long as possible.

One boss I knew specialized in excuse number 1. No matter how much information we provided, Kenny could always think of something else to ask for. Most of my colleagues just decided and acted, operating on the well-known “Don’t Tell” principle that it’s easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. That made Kenny happy, since if something went wrong he simply claimed ignorance and the blame slid over him and on to us. It worked but let him off the hook.

My friend Mary refused to play that game. Instead, she would charge into Kenny’s office and say, “Unless you order me not to, I’m going to …” followed by the action she wanted to take. Kenny would grow pink with frustration. Telling her to not do something was a decision, and it was to be avoided. It might also make her mad and Kenny was afraid of Mary. Even nodding and allowing her to go ahead was a decision he didn’t want to make, but it was the path of least resistance, so he nearly always took it. But he couldn’t claim ignorance.

It was a great method, but Mary gave it up and returned to the Don’t Tell approach. She said, “Kenny suffers too much. I don’t mind taking the heat for my decisions and I don’t want him to have a heart attack.”

The Micro-Manager

You will encounter a few great bosses, a few terrible bosses, and many mediocre bosses in your career. Virtually anyone can succeed with a great boss. Actively manage your work-life and you can succeed with (or despite) the not-so-great ones.

Active management of your own work-life requires first that you strive to understand your boss’ needs and style. After the initial getting-to-know each other stage, ask her or him how they like to operate. Does she prefer to get frequent updates or be notified only when work is complete or problems arise? Which decisions are delegated and which are reserved? Does she encourage or discourage asking for advice from those inside her group? Outside her group? And so on. Most managers are self-aware enough that they can give you valuable guidance.

Listen to co-workers’ opinions on what the boss is like but follow Marvin Gaye’s advice to believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. Your co-workers may be mistaken or misleading when they tell you what the boss likes and hates, so take their word as a data point, not as truth.

Once you figure out the boss’s style and preferences, you have two choices – adapt your style to match or find another job. One caveat: if you often find it necessary to move on, the problem may be with you, not the bosses.

The micro-manager is a common style. He wants to tell you, in detail, what to do and how to do it. Then he looks over your shoulder and double checks everything you do. That’s appropriate when we’re inexperienced or he doesn’t know us very well, but most engineers chafe if the boss keeps doing it. The true micro-manager can’t help it. He does it because he likes to do it or because he’s insecure, not because it’s necessary.

I had an otherwise great supervisor who insisted on checking every single detail of my work. If I produced a graph, he wanted to see the tabular data so he could check every point and add up every column of numbers. It took him weeks to review the simplest client report, so as a program manager I had to force subordinate engineers to complete their reports in much less than the scheduled time or risk missing a client deadline. My co-workers adapted by resigning themselves to his microscopic reviews, with one of them saying, “I don’t need to edit my own reports, the boss does that for me.” For a while I adopted that same attitude but it was exasperating.

Finally, I told my micro-managing boss that his mania for editing reports was bothering me and asked how I could get him to only spot check. His reply was clear, “When I stop finding errors in your reports, I’ll stop checking them.” We were in a reinforcing cycle: I made only cursory reviews of reports done by my team because I knew he would carefully scrutinize them. He carefully reviewed because I wasn’t doing a thorough job of it.

So I scrubbed my next few reports squeaky clean. The boss did his usual detailed review and they came back with only word-choice changes. When I showed him how he was making only minor edits, he looked very pained but said, “You’re right. From now on your stuff goes out with only a brief review. But embarrass me and I’ll go right back to details.”

It actually worked. He was sharp enough to realize his own foibles and change his practice without getting defensive. Many bosses can’t change. Next time we’ll talk about one of those.