We have all been guilty of it: lusting after the proverbial Iron Throne that is our boss’s office. Whether they made a bone-headed call or are simply using resources in a manner you disagree with, it is common to occasionally think we could be doing a better job than our boss.
However, unless you were formerly employed by Dewey & LeBoeuf, generally this feeling quickly passes and you resume your daily activities. At least, that is the way I thought it was supposed to work, but after having experienced a Cold War-esque stand-off with one of my newly acquired team members, I developed a few Sun Tzu-vian tricks to ensure I would emerge victorious.
With that build-up aside, allow me to disappoint you with a few facts of the case. This particular team member was a great employee. Under previous management, they were groomed to take over the team in the future and had begun to establish a manager-like rapport with the other team members.
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To say the carpet was pulled out from underneath her when her former boss was fired and the department was moved under legal would be an understatement. Even still, she was perfectly gracious and welcoming of me as her new boss. However, shortly after I assumed the helm, I noticed she began to leave me out of many operations you would expect your manager to be involved with.
I was never asked to sign the team birthday cards because she “forgot.” She routinely took the initiative in assigning tasks to other members of my team without my approval. And she even once claimed I would have been too busy to join the team for cake and thought it best not to invite me. (The latter was a sure sign the exclusion was not for my benefit, as anyone who knows me knows I would gladly tell Chief Justice Roberts to stop the clock for a few minutes if there was a pending promise of cake in one of the chambers.)
Besides the fact that these small efforts to undermine me made me look bad in front of my new team, denying me cake was grounds for war. But as I began to assemble my best offensive strategy, which included a week’s worth of buying breakfast for the team, followed up by eviscerating one of her written assignments to assert my law degree, it dawned on me this might not be the best approach.
In addition to alienating my current adversary, I am sure any goodwill my stale donuts and coffee would engender with my team would quickly be replaced with disdain by my humiliation of one of their well-liked peers. I instead opted to subdue my enemy without fighting and began to support her and elevate her in front of her peers and my fellow managers at every chance I could.
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Not only did my team notice how supporting of a boss I could be, my adversary began to include me in the team activities and, eventually, confided in me why she was distant at the start of my tenure. Her reaction to me was nothing personal, she assured me, but rather the realization that now with the team under the legal umbrella, she would never be able to climb the ranks unless she had a JD.
Truthfully, I understood where she was coming from. She had worked hard for years to climb the ranks, only to have the opportunity for advancement shut in her face through no fault of her own. Luckily, while she and I were working toward improving our relationship, my advocating on her behalf was also garnering her well-deserved interest from other departments looking to fill management roles — interest that culminated in a recent management job offer for her.
Although my survival of the attempted coup d’état was far less entertaining than what is portrayed on HBO, it was much more rewarding. My approach not only helped me gain the respect of my team, it helped gain the trust of a new management colleague.
Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at [email protected].