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Anonymous

05/21/20 at 7:14PM UTC

Career

How to deal with suffocating bosses?

My virtual micromanaging boss has been constantly checking up on me since the pandemic. He has extreme mood swings, rarely asks for input from others, is reluctant to delegate and since we've all been working from home, he asked to be copied on all team e-mails. This is very unlike him. It's like a switch was flipped and the trust to lead is no longer there. It's literally suffocating and I honestly thought things would've died down by now. Help/Advice??

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04/09/21 at 7:01AM UTC

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04/09/21 at 7:01AM UTC

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Anonymous

05/30/20 at 12:39AM UTC

I agree with what other posters that stress may be the cause and we are all in a stressful time. I wonder if your boss is feeling pressure from above to make sure productivity remains high. I like the suggestions of CCing everything if that is what he requested. I had a similar situation when someone in leadership took away our flexibility in our working hours and told us to ask permission before we adjusted our schedules - which had previously been permitted. I was actually often necessary to meet with our clients. This new rule didn't last long once the requests started rolling in. We also got a "that's not what I meant" response.

Darlene Frances

05/24/20 at 7:57PM UTC

Copy the boss on every single email, even the minutia.....I did that and in under two hours she wrote this to me: “No no! I didn’t mean everything!” I responded that I thought that’s what she had requested. I was cracking up laughing that after 6 years she still couldn’t acknowledge that I work my a$$ off and never get recognized for it.

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:59PM UTC

Thanks for the advice, Darlene!

Anonymous

05/23/20 at 6:20PM UTC

I’m currently dealing with the same thing. I’m documenting everything she does and I am going to give to her boss.

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:58PM UTC

Ughhh, so sorry to hear.

Anonymous

05/23/20 at 2:43PM UTC

I had the same issue and acquiesced and am cc'ing my boss on every email I send. At first I struggled with it because I was worrying about what it said about me and also what it said about my boss to be cc'ed on every little email but it was the demand and I am doing it. I had to let go of the thought pattern about what it said about me and let my boss be responsible for what it said about them. I got a call this last week after multiple emails were flying to her inbox regarding something we were working on and the boss called me and exclaimed, "There is a lot of emails going out today." Haha, you asked for it. But seriously, it is about the boss' insecurities and not a reflection of me. The whole team was experiencing the same thing as one could tell from the cc'ing everyone on emails. Since then, the boss is more friendly and less stressed so it is a small price to pay.

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:58PM UTC

Sorry you had the same issue! So glad to hear things are resolved.

Kelsey Gittings

196

Flexible detail driven technical professional

05/23/20 at 2:29PM UTC

Stress is a tricky thing. It can come out in a multitude of ways. We have a team lead that when he starts to stress out he gets micromanaging too. Either hos boss is cracking down on him in the same way, so to have the answers for his boss at any point in time he is doing the same to you, or because it's work from home and he can't hear the normal office chatter and know what's going it's giving anxiety and panic about "What's happening with my team????" Great suggestions from Meggie! Take the initiative and send updates on your own. We have a team email that goes to the lead and the lead combines that all into a daily email to the manager to send out Daily Status Report (DSR) to Directors and such. These emails are strictly fact base. There is an executive summary where they can see how a project is going, and then under that we get into details like percentages complete, start dates and end dates, a comment section for blockers. This serves two purposes for our group: 1. It shows accountability from us, proactive and happy to communicate what is happening in our group. 2. It's a record for us when they say, WHY aren't you delivering by your end date! (we have project scoping issues from that group in the business, and it's not something our team can fix) We answer with the DSRs. We showed you every blocker we had a long the way. We are dependant on these three groups ahead of us. Without the information we literally can't do our job. While it seems like the blame game, our fact only based DSRs have major bigger system improvements by showing bottlenecks and allowing teams to find solutions to problems they didn't realize they had. Sometimes it is just as simple as loop everyone in, and then the stress eases. It's annoying. Trust me. I get it. We started this whole process while we were still in the building.... That's the kind of communication help our business needed. Now that we are all work from home we communicate even more. When you can't over hear the office chatter, sometimes you have to create email chatter to keep the team in the loop.

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:58PM UTC

Thanks so much for all of this support and advice, Kelsey! I especially love the 2-purpose breakdown.

Kelsey Gittings

196

Flexible detail driven technical professional

05/26/20 at 3:14PM UTC

Any time. It's hard to do when your frustrated with a situation, but sometimes you have to take a step back, and know you don't know the whole situation (just like we don't when giving input), but sometimes doing the over communication will help drive relaxation for the team. An extra 5 mins to send an email outweighs the stress in my personal book.

Meggie Kwiatkowski

05/23/20 at 2PM UTC

I would agree with both of the other comments. You may want to try the managing up part first. If this is unusual behavior for your boss, it's likely that there's some new underlying stresser that they're dealing with (aren't we all??). By taking initiative to give them updates and let them know you're handling your work, they may move you back to the "I don't have to worry about this" category. If, however, you try this and things are still bad, then I would suggest going to HR or a trusted superior. You'll be able to show that you tried a solution already albeit without success. Try to avoid going in with a defensive me me me attitude, and maybe try to take the approach that you're concerned for your boss and your team. Not that I think you have a me me me attitude about this at all, quite the opposite, but just making a suggesting as to how to approach the conversation. Lastly, I would caution how you go about speaking to others on your team to see if they're having the same experience. Despite your best intentions, this could be construed as you trying to stir up trouble and could end up hurting your cause. If your boss caught wind, they might think you're ganging up on him/her. Good luck!

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:57PM UTC

Meggie... love these motivational ideas! TY!

Jillian Post

1.3k

Building better communication strategies

05/23/20 at 1:03PM UTC

Why do many suggestions for these kinds of scenarios seem to further victimize and marginalize someone just because they have less power? Your boss is doing a bad job and needs to be held accountable for ineffective interaction. Reach out to their superior if you can, or talk to them, or a conflict specialist, or HR. Don’t let it fester.

Anonymous

05/26/20 at 2:57PM UTC

Thanks, ConRez.

Erica

05/21/20 at 9:37PM UTC (Edited)

Sorry you're going through this, but the pandemic is a difficult time of change, and I think a lot of people are more on-edge than they normally would be, so I would try to withhold judgement for now. Call some trusted team members, see if they are experiencing the same shift in behaviors and take stock of your work recently- if your productivity and track record of finishing assignments on time and with good quality hasn't changed, you might want to consider sending proactive, regular updates and "manage up" until he gets more comfortable again.