Q & A Table of Contents
The Boss Seems Afraid To Be Boss
From: Josep, Barcelona, Spain
Question: I am new in a little company since last February. This company belongs to a group of companies with a common General Manager. I am the Director of the 'little' company.
Two months after my start at this company the General Manager hired a new Operations Manager for the Big Company. I must report to this Operations Manager. The problems are:
- I do not have good feelings with this man.
- This man treats the directors with arrogance and bad manners.
- He is only concerned in sending mails to others delivering tasks and responsibilities. His main obsession is to arrange meetings and later change the agenda of everybody.
- He is just concerned with preparing very extended reports for the General Manager. He is afraid to talk with the General Manager and yet he is not able to take decisions (that in the past were taken by ourselves as Directors) without talking with the General Manager beforehand.
You can imagine that is a very difficult situation and very dismotivating.
Some advice?
Response: Your description gives me a sense the Operations Manager (O.M) is very unsure of himself. Do the other Directors have the same opinion of him that you have? It is important for you to find out whether the Directors are in agreement. If they do agree among themselves, it could make sense to discuss a common strategy for improving the situation. Can the Directors communicate directly with the General Manager (G.M.) without having to go through the O. M.?
If you are the only Director (or part of a minority) that feels uncomfortable with the O.M., perhaps you should examine your alternatives: would you be better off staying with the company or looking for another job? Perhaps you should stay for one year before you leave if it would look better on your employment record.
It does sound as if you don't want to change jobs, but simply want to improve the atmosphere and operations of your company. Under those circumstances you need to examine why the O.M. was hired: did the G.M. need someone between himself and the Directors? Does the O.M. have a relationship with the G.M., the owners of the Big Company, or political connections that make him particularly valuable?
Changing meeting agendas is certainly bad manners. It is also a poor way to make decisions. If you arrive at a meeting prepared for one set of issues and the other parties want to discuss different issues, you can't negotiate as wisely. So perhaps you want to let the O.M. know that if he wants the best productivity from you, using mutually accepted agendas can mean you are better prepared when you and he meet.
Can you think about all the possible reasons the O.M. may be behaving badly? Perhaps you can discuss this with other Directors. Is the O.M. afraid of something? Does he come from an organization that was full of paranoia, in which people had to do everything on paper to protect their reputations? If your current company did not have a paranoid environment before the O.M.'s arrival, perhaps there are ways to increase his confidence by doing things 'his way' now so that in the future he is more open to accepting other people's ideas.
You might find ways to develop a relationship with the O.M., finding out whether your assumptions about his motives are accurate, learning more about his objectives and his preferred ways of doing things. With that information you may be able to develop a more satisfactory professional relationship. In order to do this you need to consider how much time you are prepared to invest in improving things and whether this time investment is appropriate.
To a certain extent, the O.M. sounds like a 'bully'. I don't know how that would translate into Spanish. But one key characteristics of bullies is that they are afraid of failure. Perhaps you can tell the O.M. "I am afraid we may fail to reach agreement.?" Warning him that he might be part of a failure may get his attention and help improve the situation.
I wish you good luck with this. It does not sound like fun.
Steve
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