The Alternative Manager: slave

Usually very nervous in tone (you may even have seen slaves who tremble or sweat slightly). Every utterance from the Superior is supported with, often excessive, approving body-language, and as soon as a suggestion is made, it is greeted with “we’ll get on to it right away” or similar. In the worst case, the Slave will delegate on the spot, so watch out for the “Jack, can you see that Superior gets it by Friday please”. Incidentally, do not argue if this happens to you. Just agree in public, and then if Friday is a ridiculous deadline, or the task is impossible anyway, go and discuss it with your boss now.

If the Slave has missed a deadline, or failed to achieve something, and is caught out by the Superior, the Slave will always cover with “we’ve got a few problems with that right now, but it should be done early next week”. Whatever happens, the Slave will never tell the Superior that something he/she has said is wrong/impossible/stupid; rather they will try to make it right/feasible/magnificently-farsighted.

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Superiors (see previous posts) are often quite different when acting as immediate bosses instead of visiting nobility. Remember that your own boss...

...will not see them as a remote figure in the way that most others do
...is concerned about them as a boss in the same way that you are concerned about the actions of your own boss
...has evolved a strategy for dealing with them, which may well involve quite different behaviour from the behaviour displayed to you in “boss-mode”

The last is the key point, and so it is worth a brief discussion of survival styles available to a boss when working for each kind of Superior. A little observation when the opportunity presents itself (i.e. while you are being silent in the Superior’s presence) should quickly reveal your boss’s choice. We begin by classifying these boss-survival styles, and then consider which of them work which each kind of Superior. They are:

The next posts will look briefly at each in turn.

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The Alternative Manager

How your Boss talks to his/her Superior: #2 - The Slave

Understand the relationship between your Boss and his/her Superior