George B. Bradt - Influence and Impact

In particular, people often think about their relationship with their manager differently from how the manager defines it. Your manager, and your manager's manager, have sets of implicit norms that are usually subsets of the organization's rules. For example, if your manager is insecure, they may rely on you to support them rather than supporting you. If the functional head is a “bias to action” leader, they may think everyone should operate the same way.

Many times, the company's explicit values are different from the behaviors and attitudes they reinforce in reality. Learning the organizational and team culture will increase your cultural agility, which has value in any new setting. Listening and communicating effectively is essential to increasing your influence and impact. Adapting to the culture-as-is is critical to getting the types of rewards and reinforcements you are looking for.

It is human nature to want to blame other people for the problems in which we find ourselves. v Our sense of self tells us we are right, and that problems arise because others have misunderstood our intent, or because they are unfair or have ulterior motives. Some people blame themselves, but the majority maintain personal equilibrium by externalizing problems, even though that may not lead to the best solution.

Linda had been brought in by the president of a small company, Akito, as his head of HR. In reality, he really wanted Linda to handle many tactical and operational issues that he, as CEO, did not want to deal with. She sat in on meetings and frequently provided direction to other team leaders, even though she had no involvement in their work. If anyone challenged her, she pushed back by drawing on the CEO's authority. “Akito made it clear to me that he expects this from you.”

The team was clearly unhappy with her ambiguous role, and developed a noticeable passivity toward her directives. I (Bill) was brought in by Akito to help Linda be more effective, but when I tried to help her find ways to give direction, through influence or from her own authority, she rejected the idea that she should do anything different. “They just resent my relationship with Akito. If they don't improve, we may have to find other people who will listen.”

Managers make or break a job experience. vi The problems with managers are legion—from micromanagers to laissez-faire, from domineering to passive, and from abusive to neglectful. Some managers are poor managers. Some were promoted because they were a strong front-line worker, or they have seniority. Others are given unrealistic responsibilities and are browbeaten themselves. More have the right technical skills but have no training or experience in managing. Management is, after all, a learned skill rather than an innate talent.

At least as often, there is a mismatch in style or misalignment of objectives between manager and employee. When the two expect different things, or have different workstyles, problems are likely to follow. A hands-off manager may be exactly what one person, who is self-confident, risk-taking and focused, needs to be successful. That same manager may be exactly the wrong one for a person who needs clear, specific direction, tries to avoid missteps, and works best with detailed plans and timelines.

When you and your manager are misaligned, tensions grow. It invariably leads to anger and disappointment for both. For example, an employee thinks their job is to collaborate with their manager to develop ideas and brainstorm in a meeting, while the manager is expecting a well-considered proposal with pros and cons and a recommendation. Unless the team member accepts the manager's view of the job, they are frustrated by the manager's refusal to help them, and the manager views the employee as underperforming.

We try to get our managers to give us what we think we need, or what has worked for us in the past. But as a supervisor once advised, “Bill, you'll be much happier if you figure out what your supervisor is good at and learn that. Trying to get your supervisor to give you what you think you need to learn is much more frustrating.”

People often attribute problems at work to the people who work for them. Just as employees tend to blame their managers for many problems, managers tend to think that failures or misses are due to “weak players” and look for ways to replace them. Both authors have known managers who have an endless cycle of replacing team members, all at once or one at a time, never stopping to think that the problem may be themselves instead of their team.

Replacing team members may be necessary, particularly when a new leader comes into a role and has a different vision, strategy, or mandate than the prior one. At some point it is the job of a leader to make the most of the people they have rather than continuously blaming the individuals for what is actually their own responsibility. The manager's manager and others start to notice this pattern of blaming the team members, and the problem with the team becomes a problem with the manager. Before long, the organization is looking for a new leader, rather than new players.

Just as there are managers whom no one can work for, and teams that need to be replaced, there are companies whose vision, culture, and values are either objectively wrong, or wrong for you. When you find yourself working for a company that is focused on self-enrichment, and your values lead you to provide for others, you may need to consider moving on. However, attributing difficulties in your job performance to the company may mask the difficulties you have in adapting to the environment you are in. You may be externalizing responsibility for your own difficulty accepting that we all have to adapt to our environment to survive. Keep in mind that, unless you are in a position of significant authority, you are not likely to substantively change the company you work for.

Attributing responsibility to others severely limits your options. If you see the difficulties as lying outside of what you are doing and how you are doing it, you can only do two things: Try to get the “other” to change or find a better “other.” The former is difficult, because the others feel blamed, which makes them angry, hurt, and defensive. Moreover, the behaviors you find problematic likely have been working for them. The latter is time-consuming, and you have no guarantee that a new job is going to give you a better experience than your current one.

By contrast, assuming responsibility for finding a solution to feeling like you aren't succeeding gives you a wide range of options to develop and demonstrate your value. Even if you do decide that the current situation needs to be changed, we recommend spending some time making sure you are doing what is really needed to succeed before jumping ship.

In summary, many of our efforts to contribute to the organization paradoxically cause us to lose influence and impact. We try to do more, or do what we know best, or what feels safe, unconsciously leading us to detract from our value and weaken our impact. The actions we take are a response to our attitudes, emotions, and underlying beliefs about ourselves, others, and our organizational context. The good news is that you have the ability to turn the tables and increase your agency and effectiveness. What you prioritize, where you and your team focus attention, and how you act, respond, and communicate can be changed to make it clear you are aligned to your manager, your function and the organization.