12 Ways to Deal with Your Incompetent Manager
It’s “Solution Saturday.” Erin suggested we discuss leading up.
You’re stuck with an incompetent manager who hides in the office, talks too much, has poor people skills, can’t delegate, won’t make decisions, or some other disturbing manager-malady.
How to lead up when managers are incompetent?
Rule #1:
Don’t complain to the people who promoted your incompetent manager.
Your boss’s boss promoted your incompetent manager. HR is motivated to help your incompetent manager succeed. It’s hard to admit you made a mistake when you promoted or hired the wrong person. We justify our decisions.
12 ways to lead up when your manager is incompetent:
- Determine who you want to be. Make a list of your best qualities. How will you express them in the context of your incompetent manager? Be your best self, even when others aren’t.
- Realize your incompetent manager probably thinks you’re hard to manage.
- Get advice or coaching outside your organization.
- Don’t listen to friends and family. They take your side.
- Engage in self-reflection. Stay open to the idea that the issue may be you. Your resistance to authority is about you, for example.
- Keep doing a great job. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot because you have an incompetent manager.
- Adapt to your incompetent manager’s weaknesses. If they micromanage, provide reports before they ask, for example.
- Compensate for your incompetent managers weaknesses.
- Remember, your incompetent manager was competent in another context.
- Explore ways that succeeding with an incompetent manager makes you better. Make a list of qualities you will develop over the next thirty days, with your incompetent manager in mind.
- Focus on the future rather than complaining about the past. Work on making things better.
- Promote yourself out of your organization or make a lateral move. But, if you’re branded as a complainer, lateral moves are difficult.
What “leading up” suggestions would you add?
What does leading up look like when you have a competent manager?
I’m sending Erin a Leadership Freak coffee cup because I used her topic.
When necessary find another employer.
Thanks Bob. Yup.
This is a great topic that far too many employees want the answer to. I like your 12 items, as they put the onus on the employee to adapt to a situation that is hard to change. However, I think HR should know about the bad manager, so one idea might be to go to HR, say that “here’s what I plan to do about it (picking some of your 12 items), but you should know that my manager is not competent to be doing his job well.
Unless HR knows from many people that there is a probably, you may see your boss promoted again and again.
Thanks Pete. I really like the idea of telling HR what you intend to do. Great add.
Do your job the way you always did. No need for you yo change. The incompetent manager you could approach and ask what they expect? If you don’t find yourself on the same page, discuss options, perhaps point out why you work the way you do, and what they see different? Worst case you may have to move on. The other side is educate the manager so your on the same page.
Thanks Tim. Yes, take some time to talk it over. Let’s not forget to build positive relationships as well. 🙂
Most of the time, they got where they were on SOME merit. They’re your bad manager because they aren’t doing that thing. And probably they don’t like it any more than you do.
Is there a way to get the incompetent manager to do what they’re good at? I’m lucky, my dirrent boss is very good, but we work together to use each others’ strengths and cover weaknesses.
He’s an i-dotter and t-crosser, who can spend all day looking for one piece of a jigsaw. But he’s less good at cross-cutting solutions to new problems. Given free reign, he’s a fusspot. I can bring together different disciplines to create solutions. But I’m not a great one for formal organisation. Given free reign I can go off and solve the wrong problem because that’s interesting.
Between us, we play our strengths and don’t ruin too many peoples’ days.
He keeps me on task, I keep him from bogging everyone down.
Thanks Mitch. One way to lead up is to ask, “How can we maximize each other’s strengths?” Bingo!
Incompetent management always reminds me of the Peter Principle coined by Laurence J. Peters some years ago. When we all “assumed” the position of manager and leader, we were all promoted to a level of “incompetence.” We were excellent at what we did—which is why we were promoted, but then we were placed in a post we knew little about or a position in which we were incompetent. Then we became competent, and we were promoted again—to a level of incompetence. No wonder there is always so much incompetence at the top.
G.K. Chesterton—in his inevitable wisdom and humor—asks a couple of essential questions not to the incompetent, but to those around them:
Is it better for 100 burros to a lead a lion, or ONE Lion to lead 100 burros?
Must we take care not to free a camel of the burden of his hump, lest we may free him from being a camel?
Are we aware when elephants fight, it’s the “grass” that suffers?
Thanks Books. Your last sentence made me laugh out loud. Love it! Thanks also for sharing your insights. I thought of the Peter Principle as I wrote.
It’s interesting to realize that when we stretch ourselves we’re stepping into our incompetence. Stepping there is one thing. Staying there is another. You bring clarity to the meaning of “Stepping up”
There is a Korean proverb which also illustrates what happens in these situations. “When whales fight, the shrimp’s backs are broken.”
Thanks for jumping in, McSteve.
Great list!!!
The ibly thought I have is I think an honest conversation about how you can best support your manager is always good.
Sometimes conflict comes from different visions of what success looks like.
Thanks Travis. I think we usually think about what the manager is supposed to do for us. Making this shift is an important way to build a mutually beneficial relationship.
Remember there are other managers in the organization who may recognize your talent (in dealing with your incompetent manager.)
Think NFL… “that player’s talents would work well on our team.”
Thanks Ken. Yes. A lateral move is definitely something to explore.
Great post. Too many managers suffer from a lack of training. Harvard Biz Review reported that the avg age that a manager gets their first leadership training is 42 which is pretty stunning. So…that means that staff needs to manage their managers. I’m not talking about a mutiny but rather seeing the issues and presenting an idea or a suggestion about not only what you see but HOW you would like to propose fixing it. Ask “May I share an idea?” and “What do you think?” and “Could we give this a try?” In my training of Exec and Personal Assts around the world, I have come to believe that the incompetence is also ignorance. They need support and education most of all.
This isn’t 100% related but I have recently found myself in a position to move to another organization. I truly love what I do and the organization I work for, even if I don’t always like it. This opportunity is too good to pass up and as I think of moving on I can’t help but have the question: How do you transition out and maintain the positive relationship?
It takes a lot of strength to deal with incompetent managers. Problem is either they think they are very competent and think highly of themselves or they are just low in self esteem. Guess they need to undergo a dose of humility. The problem may look like its them, but sometimes maybe one is a perfectionists. Therefore , my conclusion is this, better to do to your best. Never end up like them .
Maybe some good would come out of the situation.
I soooo needed things to be put in an easily digestible perspective. Thank you. Think I might frame this and print it out in wallet size LOL.
Very timely post for me. Another option is the boss may leave. My boss has announced he’s retiring in July so rather than looking to leave I’m now seeing how I can best influence the recruiters to select someone whose characteristics are a better fit.
Just lost my job because of an incompetent team leader. The main issue I had with him is the fact that he would verbally instruct me to do something stupid and later give me the blame or assigning me tasks and being upset I actually solve them and told me things like “put your feet on the ground” like sending an email to a colleague was a big deal. I am just amazed!
As a manager that has inherited incompetent managers it is so important that employees communicate with me in relation to the challenges they are facing with their direct manager. This feedback assists me to develop and coach my managers and potentially performance manage these managers out. It is not in my best interest to keep the manager who is incompetent as this harms to overall culture and engagement of my teams.
This list would be better titled: “12 ways incompetent managers hope you will act”. In reality, the only thing you can and should do when faced with incompetent managers is dust off your CV and find a new job worth your time.