Fire Your Boss (11 page)
Authors: Stephen M. Pollan,Mark Levine
Tags: #Psychology, #Self Help, #Business
Jon Halladay is a mechanical engineer working with a consulting firm that specializes in the aviation industry. Having been recruited to work for the firm from a major manufacturer of aircraft engines, Jon thought he’d be greeted as a welcome addition to the firm. But he soon realized the supervisor of the project he was working on was problematic. He came to see me for advice. Jon’s discreet notes on the supervisor revealed someone who got angry whenever he was interrupted by a call from the company’s management. The supervisor routinely let internal company paperwork slide and seemed to feud with every other manager, from the head bookkeeper to the director of sales. The only time he seemed happy was when he was staring intently at the screen of his workstation. It was soon clear to Jon and me that we were dealing with a loner. To thrive, Jon would need to serve as a gatekeeper.
The stickler.
This is the boss who carries a huge rule book and needs to refer to it often. He wants everything done according to an established pattern he has set up, either in his head, or on paper if he’s an obsessive. He focuses more on how and when things are done, than on the result. He cares a great deal about how the work area and the people in it look to others.
Joan Kent is the daughter of one of the other partners in my law firm. Her father suggested she talk to me about the problems she was having at her first job after graduating college. Joan had studied landscape architecture at a prestigious Ivy League university. Her faculty adviser helped her land a position with a well-known architectural firm headquartered in the northern suburbs of New York. Joan became a member of the staff that drew up plans for the landscaping around the firm’s corporate headquarters and shopping-center projects. Being a free spirit and creative, Joan just assumed she’d find a supportive environment. But rather than getting artistic feedback and input from her manager, all she heard was how her wardrobe wasn’t professional, her rendering wasn’t pristine, her lettering wasn’t clear enough, and her designs didn’t fit the firm’s style. Eventually, she and I realized her manager, despite being in a creative field, was a stickler.
The glory seeker.
This is the boss who has to be a hero, even if it means creating the crisis herself. She needs to be at the center of everything. She seeks out flattery. She always needs an audience and loves to hear herself talk. She may be very concerned about her appearance. She is jealous whenever anyone else gets credit or recognition.
Nancy Bell was ready to quit when she first came to see me. She and her husband, a member of the New York City Council, had first come to see me when they purchased their co-op apartment. Now she was looking for advice about her job as development director for a small, specialized museum. A gifted schmoozer with a large social network, Nancy was a very good fund-raiser. Yet her boss, the director of the museum, seemed to have problems with her work. She and I went over her observations. He typically took the slightest snafu — most recently, sitting two antagonistic people at the same table at an event — and blew it up into an epic catastrophe. He then personally intervened, and finally, very publicly talked about how he had saved the museum from disaster. Nancy explained that he did this, not just with her, but with everyone from the curator to the building superintendent. She and I agreed he was a classic glory seeker who needed to be seen as a hero, always riding to the rescue.
The fighter
. This is the boss who’s always seeking conflict. He’s confrontational and has to get in the last word. He sets himself and his staff in competition with other individuals, departments, or companies. He seems to thrive on putting others down. He seems to enjoy expressing anger.
I first met Tom Duffy when I appeared as a guest on a consumer news and information program he produced for a fledgling cable channel. He was an easygoing and very professional producer, so I was surprised when he called to tell me he had almost punched his boss the day before. I told him to come right in to see me. Tom was working on a new show at the same network, directly under the executive producer who had created the show. The executive producer, referred to by some as “a programming genius,” had actually screamed at Tom in front of the entire cast and crew after a recent show. I calmed Tom down, walked him through my approach to work, and asked him to prepare an analysis of his boss’s actions. When we went over them, it sounded like the man was a maniac. He not only ranted, raved, and insulted everyone from the cameraman to the hosts, but he seemed to have a vendetta against other shows on the network. He was the prototypical fighter boss.
The coward
. This is the boss who’s always afraid. She’s frightened of anything new and every potential change. She’s always seeing the potential risk or downside; for her there’s a cloud around every silver lining and the glass is always half empty. Because she’s so fearful she’s always blaming others for problems.
When I told Janet Crosetti to figure out her department chairman’s needs and wants, she really took the task to heart. She jotted down her observations for a week, and then when she realized there was no departmental staff meeting that week, continued making notes for another week. Janet even went to a PTA meeting and a school board meeting, both of which she knew her boss would attend, in order to observe her in different environments. She said she noticed that whenever a new idea was proposed, her boss reacted negatively, but using a different rationale depending on which audience she was facing. At a staff meeting she said the new idea — one of Janet’s proposals — would take too much prep time. At the PTA meeting she knocked down one parent’s idea by saying it could detract from the time spent with each child. And at the school board she responded to a question about creating a literary magazine for the school by saying it would be too costly. Janet said her boss’s two favorite phrases were “We’ve always…” and “We’ve never…” Janet needed no help from me to see her department chairperson was a cowardly boss.
Once you’ve figured out your boss’s needs, you have a simple mission: do whatever you can to help him or her meet one or more of those needs.
If you’ve found your boss has one pressing need, your task is clear. But if your boss has multiple needs, you’ll have to do some prioritizing. You probably won’t be able to meet all the needs you’ve uncovered, at least not right away. That’s not a bad thing, however. Multiple needs offer multiple chances to curry favor with your boss. Once you’ve learned the technique, you can tackle one after another, growing in your boss’s admiration each step along the way. But right now, let’s concentrate on deciding which need you should address first.
Back in the 1950s a psychologist named Abraham Maslow developed a theory of human behavior based on needs. (See the box on page 90: Maslow’s Achievers And Optimism.) He believed that individuals are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that some needs must be satisfied before others. He arranged categories of needs into a pyramid shape, which he called the hierarchy of needs. The current model of Maslow’s pyramid has eight stages, or types of needs.
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MASLOW’S ACHIEVERS AND OPTIMISM
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become a favorite of those looking for psychological insights that can be applied in pragmatic ways. That’s because, unlike most of the other major psychological theories, Maslow’s is an optimistic philosophy based on high achievers. Freud based his theories on his study of mentally ill and neurotic individuals. B. F. Skinner studied how pigeons and rats learned. Both were determinists, seeing little difference between the motivations of humans and animals. Maslow, on the other hand, based his theory on his studies of exemplary individuals such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass. Maslow didn’t believe humanity was destined for an endless cycle of violence and other evils. He theorized that as long as we’re able to move toward satisfying our needs, we’ll also move toward self-fulfillment and helping others fulfill their dreams. That’s an excellent lesson for us to apply to our work lives: learn from the successful and believe your goal is within reach.
At the base of the pyramid are the most basic needs: those that are biological and physiological. These would include the basic needs to sustain life, such as air, food, water, and shelter, as well as being warm, sleeping, and sexual urges. I think it’s safe to assume your boss’s most basic needs are already satisfied. And to be honest, if one isn’t, there’s nothing you can do that’s appropriate to a work relationship.
Once those basic needs are satisfied, people move on to try to satisfy safety needs. These would be the needs of feeling physically safe and secure. I believe this is the first category of needs you may have to address. While they’re not actually physical fears, I believe that any of the needs typical of the cowardly boss fit at this level. If your boss needs to be insulated or protected from change, that’s the first need you should address. Maslow’s theory is that people will only progress on to one category of needs after having all their “lower” needs satisfied. That means if you try to address a higher-level need than your boss’s fear of new things, you’ll probably be unsuccessful.
After someone’s basic needs are met and he’s feeling out of danger, he moves on to address needs of belongingness and love. These would be the desire to feel part of a family or group, to give and receive affection, to have relationships with others. If, for instance, your boss shows signs of wanting to be part of the group or develop friendships, that would be a belongingness need. Here’s where most of the buddy-boss needs fall.
When belongingness and love needs are addressed, people next move to what Maslow calls esteem needs. These are the needs to achieve, to have status, and to gain others’ approval. You can divide esteem needs into two types: first are those that boost self-esteem, like being good at what you do; second are those that represent the need for the esteem of others, say, wanting to have a good reputation. The loner-boss traits fit the need for self-esteem, while the stickler, fighter, and glory-seeker-boss traits fit the need for others’ esteem.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs continues on to include cognitive needs (self-awareness and knowledge), aesthetic needs (beauty and order), self-actualization needs (self - fulfillment and growth), and finally transcendence needs (helping others to grow or become self - fulfilled). However, I don’t think any of these steps actually fit into the workplace relationship. In the previous chapter I stressed that you shouldn’t look to the workplace for emotional, spiritual, and psychological satisfaction. Well, neither should you try to satisfy these needs in your boss. If he needs self-awareness, he should go into therapy. If she needs beauty, she should take up her brush and paint. And if he needs self-fulfillment and to help others grow, he should go to a house of worship.
Applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to your goal of securing your job means addressing cowardly-boss needs first, buddy-boss needs second, and only then any of the loner, fighter, glory-seeker, or stickler needs. Turn back to the page on which you’ve written down your boss’s needs and wants. Rank them according to how they fit in with Maslow’s hierarchy.
Janet Crosetti, for example, realized that her department chairman exhibited both safety and belongingness needs (she was always looking for someone to go out for a drink with her after school board meetings). Applying Maslow, Janet decided she had to address her boss’s safety needs before her belongingness needs. But she still had to figure out exactly how she would go about making her department chairman safe.
There’s really no mystery to how to meet your boss’s needs. Simply provide what he or she is looking for. For example, if you find that your boss needs to feel like part of the crowd, invite him to every group event you’re attending. If she wants to avoid certain meetings, offer to attend them in her place. Let’s say your boss wants to be a hero. Well, make sure to give him credit for all your own accomplishments. Maybe your boss is obsessed with her staff’s appearance. In that case, dress exactly like her. Have a boss who needs to compete? Find him a target. And if your boss is afraid of risks, help her identify and eliminate new hazards. In most cases, figuring out how to meet your boss’s needs will be easy. Let’s go back to the six types of bosses I outlined earlier and see how to meet their needs and wants.
The buddy
. Go to lunch with this boss whenever he asks…and ask
him
sometimes as well. Make sure to make him part of every group activity. If all the junior staff are planning to go out for drinks after work on Friday, ask him to come along. If he demurs, saying he doesn’t want to horn in, assure him he’s not…even if he is. Make sure he knows about the plan to form a company softball team, and if he wants to become manager, welcome the idea. When he talks about his wife and kids, listen attentively and ask for more details. If he wants personal advice, offer the best you can muster.
Tim Kalamos had determined that his boss’s biggest need was for a friend who could teach him about, and help him adjust to, life in New York. Tim invited his boss to lunch. Over corned beef sandwiches Tim explained that his brother was a doctor and he’d be happy to get some suggestions from him for a good family physician. Tim’s wife was a teacher who could help with ideas about private schools. And, coincidentally, Tim was going to Barneys for clothes at the end of the week. Did his boss want to come along?