Managing Down

Most of us can recall a time in our work history when we routinely noticed glaring inefficiencies in the business operations and easily correctable pain points in work processes but felt that bringing these issues to the attention of the management would fail to result in improvements to the system and possibly even sour our relationship with the management. This is the general experience of working in a company that lacks psychological safety.

The duty of anyone overseeing direct reports is to provide psychological safety to their direct reports in the workplace. While this is obviously the ethical and morale-building path, it is also what is best for the productivity and growth of the company. Peter Drucker’s classic but evergreen book The Practice of Management details the intricacies of this concept using the manufacturing industry as an example. The company is made of its people. Resources and capital can be obtained by any business, but the ingredient that makes one a success and others struggle to compete is the human beings in command of these resources. These resources include the people in the production facilities and the customer-facing front lines. Only when psychological safety is inherent in the culture from the top down, the human capital can flourish and carry the business to reach its full potential.

A common misconception about psychological safety is that it is another way of saying that you must appease everyone. That is false. As explained in this Harvard Business Review article, psychological safety is better described as an environment where people feel comfortable sharing unpolished ideas and candid feedback without the fear of being humiliated or punished. It is a workplace where the openness and connection of the team are prioritized over any individual ego. In such a culture, the manager’s duty is to listen to and allow feedback from their people without shutting them down or making them feel small for speaking up. If an employee shares feedback or an idea which we know is wrong for whatever reason, we must hear them out and then with a patient demeanor explain why that will not work or is not the case. Responding with anger tells them that subconsciously that we are threatened by them. Responding with annoyance of brushing them off signals that we do not respect them or feel they could possibly have any insight worth even hearing. As Peter Drucker explains, the front line people truly have insights that upper level management cannot have without spending significant time with them and building direct trust with these individuals - as we know an occasional appearance by a higher level manager is typically uncomfortable and brings out phony praise based in fear or sycophancy.

Under the shadow of a generally complacent or somewhat toxic culture, this will be more uncomfortable and difficult but is still possible and still your responsibility as a manager of other human beings. If the resistance to treating your direct reports ethically comes from your superiors, they may not understand your actions. Have the courage to set an appointment with them to explain your style of leadership and your values to them. They may advise against your approach and offer alternative methods which are more effective. Or they may take a step back and allow you more agency once they know that you are acting from a deliberate strategy.

I cannot recommend highly enough the practice of waiting to react or come to a judgement about someone else’s behavior which seems at the time to be malicious. Putting a little time and space between yourself and that situation allows reflection and objectivity. We may realize that the intent was to resolve a problem but simply delivered in a tone more abrasive than we would expect. Sometimes interactions are malicious, but waiting to respond gives us the advantage of considering avenues of addressing the disrespect while also not risking playing into their hands by embarrassing ourselves lashing out irrationally. You will find that many seemingly pushy or rude behaviors are not about you but about the person owning the behavior. They need to prove their value. They are not intending to one-up your idea or hurt you by pointing out potential technical issues with your suggestion. In their mind, they are simply demonstrating their own expertise and being helpful. Most people are always thinking of themself first and do not consider the feelings or situations of others unless they need to feign sympathy to get a favor. Understanding this could save you from a lot of unproductive hurt feelings. Before you take anything personally, make space and consider others’ intentions from their perspective.

Members of any team need to understand the overarching objective of their organization and where they fit into the plan. The most common cliche example of this concept is athletics teams. Another is a tactical military unit. Each player in the arena or warrior in the field understands what their company is working to achieve and within this overall objective they are acutely aware of their critical role and how their individual performance contributes to the success or failure of their team.

Those examples illustrate with blunt clarity the value of each team member internalizing the objective of the organization and precisely how their individual job duty plays an integral role in realizing that objective. Now think of your current workplace or any past job you have experienced. Was your mental model of the company’s objective and how you fit into that as crystal clear as that of a goalkeeper on a soccer team? Did you have the sense that this was the case for your coworkers? In my experience, this information is often no more than a vague echo in the day-to-day operations of businesses.

As employees are wrapped up in the what of their jobs, it is vital to promote the why behind the what. What is the goalkeeper doing? Preventing the ball from entering the goal. Why? So their team can get more goals and win the match. Very simple. Let’s explore a more complicated real world example. What is the duty of a school teacher? To instill knowledge and problem-solving skills into their students. Why? This makes a significant difference in how the teacher performs their duty. If the objective is to nurture the minds of the young children who will one day be the adults running hospitals, restaurants, serving as police officers, doctors and any other job, then you can imagine how the teacher with this forward thinking mindset may behave with great care and patience in their interactions with even the more difficult students. What if the reason for performing their teaching duties was simply to retain a convenient source of income in order to pay the bills. The teacher with this short-sighted and self-centered mindset will put out the least amount of energy possible and be satisfied not by the success and growth of the students but merely by continuing to remain employed. As a parent, I can assure you that the teacher who considers the well-being and experience of the students is the one I would move mountains for my children to spend their day with over the lazy and pathetic teacher. This difference in performance between the two teachers applies not only to teaching, but to any and all jobs. Imagine this difference in attitude and perspective applied to police officers, surgeons, auto mechanics, barbers, lawyers, and to your own current job. The why makes a world of difference.

When direct reports or front line workers seem to be resisting a new direction, it is a clear sign that there is a barrier between their world and the world where the new directive was penned. Besides the unfortunate handful of genuinely mentally sick individuals who are so damaged by their life experience that they actively sabotage their employer, the majority of human beings truly desire to do a good job and to win the approval of their superiors. With this in mind, it is clear that resistance to new ways of doing things is likely a failure of managers to articulate the why behind the what. Find a way within your sphere of influence to make sure your team members have a crystal clear vision of the company objective and their role within it.

Robert GreeneLaws Human Nature

The typical honest response to talk of cognitive biases is that they are mostly a thing that other people are afflicted by - certainly far more severely than we ourselves are. Well yeah. Most people… but not me. Right. Our ego naturally prevents us from automatically accepting the idea that our perceptions are tainted and inaccurate. Understandably, humans need to guard against manipulation and weaponized information. But we are capable of deploying these tactics on ourselves as well, to defend our own ego. An active pre-existing commitment to understanding and controlling our own mind is a prerequisite to being emotionally secure enough to engage in an exploration of the possibility that we ourselves are as flawed as “others”. Reaching this stage of personal growth is the starting line to accepting the social reality of our circumstances.

Now apply this concept to your situation as a steward of employees. Most of us know from our own experience or observation that new people managers often start out with the idea that they can simultaneously be a respected authority and a friend to their direct reports. They want to be the cool boss who also gets things done. This unravels when the reports who did not feel as though they received equal favoritism become indignant and insubordinate while those who do receive friend treatment begin to feel comfortable with the expectation of picking and choosing their work tasks and having more flexibility than others with budget and/or deadlines - maybe even acting as though their friendly manager has given them automatic pre-approval for anything they choose to do. You can imagine how this would become a problem.

Embracing reality in this scenario would mean accepting that our direct reports are not and cannot be our friends in this way in the workplace. We have a duty to respect and honor the chain of command in work scenarios. A useful mental tool to foster objective decision-making is to think about how you would perceive an action you are considering if it were carried out by someone you don’t particularly like. Imagine you are considering granting additional last-minute PTO to a direct report which violates or makes an exception to a 1-week advance request policy. Imagine that you heard that another employee received this treatment from another supervisor whom you dislike or feel neutral toward. If your honest reaction is that this is inappropriate, unfair, or an abuse of power then you must accept that this is exactly how others will react to you doing the same thing.

We comfort ourselves with ideas that we are more likeable, cooler, or more friendly and kind than most other people and use this as an excuse for behaviors that - if we are honest - are rooted in our insecurity, vanity, and desire to be liked. The sooner we understand that we are not a unique and special exception to the laws of human nature, the sooner we can grow into a more efficient operator of effective human management techniques.