Kiss Up and Kick Down

“Jack is a kiss-up and kick-down kind of guy.” The first time I heard this phrase it puzzled me. The meaning wasn’t completely clear. Plus, Jack seemed like a pleasant guy. It wasn’t until I saw him in action that I began to understand him and the phrase.

Jack was nice to anyone in the organization that outranked him or might eventually do so. He laughed at the bosses’ jokes and complimented them on their wise decisions. He did it so smoothly that it didn’t seem like overt kissing-up. Jack was cordial to me and other engineers, even those of us who weren’t in his chain of command. I eventually learned that his behavior, which could have been simply a reflection of an easy-going personality, was calculated, since any one of us might get promoted into a position above him.

It was Jack’s treatment of those he outranked that helped me fully understand what a nasty character he really was. He didn’t see me the day he stalked into the copier room and ordered a technician to stop her work and copy something important for him. I heard her say, “Sure. Just as soon as I’m finished.”

Jack said, “I’m pulling rank on you. Make me a copy or I’ll make sure your supervisor gives you a bad performance rating.”

I was about to intervene when I heard Jeannie, the technician, say, “You’ll have to pull something bigger than rank to get me to stop what I’m doing.” I was proud of her and pleased that she didn’t need my help in squashing Jack. He slunk away.

The incident solidified my low opinion of Jack. It also explained why the secretaries, clerks, and technicians disliked him. He epitomized Kiss-up/Kick-down behavior. I remembered it a couple of years later when I became his boss. I never again trusted his affirmations and always distrusted his motives.

Don’t Get on Their Bad Side

“If you get on the wrong side of these fellows, they take it out on you in other ways,” explains Lieutenant Hooper of the British army to Captain Ryder as to why he treats enlisted men very gently. The scene occurs early in Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel, Brideshead Revisited. Moments later Captain Ryder is admonished by his Sargent-Major, “If you get on the wrong side of senior officers, they take it out on you in other ways.”

I had just recently read those fictional exchanges when a fellow engineer at my new workplace said, “Be careful how you talk to the draftsmen. Get on their bad side and they’ll take it out on you in other ways.” I burst out laughing, offending my coworker, and no amount of explaining could set it right. He shunned me for as long as I worked at Corollo Engineers in Phoenix, proving that engineers will get back at you if you laugh at them.

The irony didn’t end there. I heard similar sentiments many times in my Corps of Engineers career and while teaching at Mississippi State University. You had to be careful to stay on the good side of the engineers, technicians, secretaries, officers, enlisted men, professors and administrators. Everybody was afraid of each other. Most of those I worked with were great people and it was easy to stay on their good side. A few were so nasty that I wondered what happened to people who got on their bad side. Maybe the nasty ones broke into their enemies’ houses and crumbled crackers between the bed sheets.

I experienced the phenomenon. For example, I once recruited an engineer from Portugal with an internationally recognized expertise in river sedimentation. When I told my boss about it, he said the Corps of Engineers could hire only U.S. citizens. When I asked Jim, our Human Resources office point-of-contact, he told me the same thing, so I asked to see the Army regulation that prohibited hiring a non-citizen. But when I read the regulation, it didn’t prohibit hiring foreign nationals at all; instead it provided a procedure for hiring them. My boss and Jim in HR were either misinformed or blowing smoke.

I followed the prescribed procedures and hired the Portuguese engineer, encountering “You can’t do that,” at every step. So, at every step I brandished the Army regulation and Department of Labor rules to overcome resistance. I definitely got on the bad side of Jim, the HR guy, and he did take it out on me in other ways, but it was worth it. An outstanding engineer joined my team and Jim stopped making up imaginary regulatory blockades, at least with me.

In a previous blog, “Plays Well with Others,” I suggested that being pleasant at work paid dividends. It does. But we shouldn’t avoid necessary disagreement out of fear of retribution. As long as we argue calmly and avoid incendiary language and insults, most people will accept disagreement, even serious disagreement, without holding a grudge. If they do take it out on us in other ways, as Jim did, then we can deal with that as just another disagreement to be resolved. Avoiding all conflict doesn’t eliminate disagreement, it just puts us at a permanent disadvantage.

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.

Pointy-Haired Bosses

The characters in Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoons vividly display super-stereotypes of workplace denizens. Among them is Dilbert’s selfish, clueless, pointy-haired boss, who destroys morale and impedes progress.

We may encounter bosses who occasionally remind us of Dilbert’s pointy-haired guy, but my experience suggests that only a few self-employed business owners and a lot of tenured professors behave that badly and get away with it. Most supervisors are decent sorts who genuinely want to do a good job. They will have faults, as we all do. They will make mistakes, as we all do. Mainly what they do is supervise in their own style, doing the things that are most comfortable.

We can talk about good supervisory styles later. Some typical bad supervisory styles include micro-manager, fearful non-decider, over-delegator, under-delegator, over-demander, smoke blower, and screamer. You may enjoy some of these if your work preferences match your supervisor’s styles. For example ….

Steven sat staring at the graph paper on his desk. I could see that he had plotted one, and only one, point on the graph paper since I left him an hour ago. That was enough time for him to have completed the simple task of plotting the data table I had left him, but it was barely started. He said, “I’m ready for you to check my work.” He wanted me to check every plotted point before he went on to the next one. That day and the next, no matter how often I told Steven to do the whole job before asking me to check it, he needed affirmation of every step.

Sherri was Steven’s complete opposite. I’d sketch out the big picture for her, give her instructions for the first few steps, and off she went. When she came back, usually much sooner than expected, the task was complete, including detailed steps we hadn’t even discussed yet. Sometimes Sherri overlooked some detail that needed fixing but she got it done.

Sherri flourished under my supervision and went on to a great career. After two days, Steven went back to his old job, saying he couldn’t work for me. He was right.

It takes talent, knowledge, and effort to supervise people, resources, and projects. Good supervisors adjust their approach to account for each employee’s personality and ability. If an employee lacks the ability or self-confidence to work independently, the supervisor must provide detailed instructions, regular check-ins, and affirmation or correction. Steven, obsessed with avoiding mistakes, needed that kind of micro-managing from me. Sherri was capable, self-confident, and enjoyed getting things done with minimal supervision. She needed the freedom to work it out herself.

If I were a great supervisor, I would have given Steven the constant monitoring and affirmation that he craved. But I’m not, and I didn’t. Sherri and I worked well together, not because I was a great supervisor, but because her work style matched perfectly with my preferred supervisory style.

Next time we’ll continue an examination of bosses and look at how to manage them.

Getting Credit at Work

“Ben got promoted because he takes the boss fishing,”

The remark stunned me. I had been in the organization several months and noticed that Ben was smart and the hardest worker in our group. Did he really get ahead because he did our branch chief off-duty favors?

I heard gripes similar to Freddie’s many times throughout my career. The woman who applied for and completed a management course got a supervisor’s position but her peers said she was just lucky to have taken that course at the right time. The person who worked hard to help the boss achieve his goals was said to be brown-nosing. With few exceptions, those promotions were actually the result of diligence and preparation, not favoritism.

The psychology of comparing our efforts to others’ is well known – we humans see our own hard work and ability as key to the good things we achieve, but tend to see others’ achievements as the product of luck or favoritism. Our own failures we see as bad luck or adversity, but we see others’ failures as their own fault. It’s a natural human instinct that we have to overcome in ourselves and learn to manage in others.

A twinge of jealousy at a co-worker’s success is natural. Don’t worry about it but don’t let it contaminate your comments or your work. Saying out loud that someone else’s success is undeserved damages you, not them. Let it go.

Credit for good ideas and good work is a tricky subject. We want and deserve credit for our contributions, but seldom are we good judges of our own contributions. Memory is selective – everyone remembers offering a good idea if it succeeds but no one remembers even endorsing it if it fails. Even if it was your idea originally, pointing out that fact doesn’t endear you to anyone but does makes you seem insecure. I found that people who are most concerned about getting credit are usually the least deserving of it and often wind up harming, rather than helping their careers.

Your boss will often claim credit for your contributions. Let her. First, as your supervisor she is responsible for both your successes and your screw-ups, so get used to that. She may chew on you in private, but a good supervisor will defend you to others when you fail. A great one will shoulder the blame in public. Sometimes it’s politically important that a boss get more credit for an accomplishment in order to give it the significance it needs for wider acceptance. Sometimes she needs the credit in order to advance you and your organization.

People generally know who did the good work. If you get an insecure supervisor or co-worker who consistently claims credit for success but puts blame for failure on you, observe what happens. Do others in the organization recognize your contributions? If you are in an organization or with a supervisor that consistently undervalues your true contributions, you are in the wrong place. Leave it. If it happens everywhere you work, you may have a distorted view of yourself.