When Your Manager Is Afraid of You
by Liz Ryan | 10:00 AM November 15, 2012
Kate, a 33-year-old marketing associate, sounded exhausted and confused. "It's the weirdest thing, " she said. "I started my job ten months ago and got off to a great start. I launched our company's first HTML newsletter. I started a client service training program that got great reviews. My six-month performance review was stellar. Then two months ago, the whole thing started to go sour."
"How so?" I wanted to know.
"My boss has started picking at me over tiny, stupid things, " she said. "He told me at my review that he was going to send me to our France office to help them build a messaging strategy, but when I asked him about it recently he said, 'That's something we have to look at down the road, ' and walked away. It's like I've gone from being his favorite employee to dog meat."
"What happened between your review meeting and this week?" I asked.
"Nothing in particular, " said Kate. "I'm chugging away. I got invited to speak at our annual sales meeting—"
"Hold it right there!" I said. "Who asked you to speak?"
"It was our VP of Sales, " said Kate. "I work with him a lot, and he had seen me speak to some client service reps. I tagged along with two of our area sales managers on a big sales call and we won the business, so he likes me for that reason, too. It's cool — my colleagues told me they don't usually let marketing people like me come to those sales meetings, much less ask them to speak."
"So, what other balls have you knocked out of the park lately?"
"There's nothing else, " she said. "I created an internal discussion community for the sales team — I guess that's something. Okay, and I pulled our CEO's and our VPs' speeches out of the archives and organized them in a catalog that we can refer to going forward and use in customer communications."
"Sister, please!" I exclaimed. " You've been in the job ten months. You're doing amazing things and changing the energy in your shop. No wonder your boss is terrified. He worries that you'll outshine him."
"Oh, that's ridiculous, " Kate scoffed. "My boss has been at the company for twenty-eight years."
"Big deal!" I said. "The VP of Sales asked you to speak at his annual sales meeting. You pulled the executive speeches archive together on your own. You launched a newsletter, you built a training program. You haven't even had your one-year anniversary. What has your boss done in that time?"
"I guess—" started Kate. "I didn't think about that. But why would he worry? He's an executive, for Pete's sake."
"So he has a lot at stake, " I said. "He has a lot of status to lose, and doesn't know the outside world you just popped in from. You launched an HTML newsletter and your boss doesn't have a clue how to run the engine if you disappear one day. You're speaking a foreign language that he thinks he should know, and you don't think he's a bit unnerved by you?"
"But he couldn't rationally think I'd want his job, " said Kate. "My job is way more fun."
"First of all, your boss doesn't necessarily know what you want, " I began, "and anyway if he's fearful, he wouldn't believe you if you said you don't want his job — fear is emotional, he's not thinking rationally. He might even be thinking that you'll do all this great stuff you do, and then leave the company and make him look bad for losing you. The guy has been in his job since you were five years old — he's content in his small box, and you think outside of it. Let's face it, your kind of person scares his kind of person to death. "
"My gosh, you hit it on the head, " said Kate. "How do I make him un-scared?"
"Very hard to do, " I said. "When your flame is big, people pick up on it. Boundary-spanning, frameless people like you can very easily create a disturbance in the Force when they enter a team of boxed-up people. Sometimes that person has to go. Sometimes something shifts in the energy and they figure out how to work together. Sometimes the fearful boss has an 'A-ha!' moment and finally sees the high-mojo person as an ally."
"So your advice is to be ready for anything, " said Kate.
"Not in the slightest, " I said. "That's way too passive for someone like you. My advice is to do what you're already doing — letting people across the company know what you're capable of. Then, when you're confident enough, level with your boss. Start out by saying something like, 'Sometimes I think that my style or my approach makes you uncomfortable.' Make it easy for him to say anything he needs to get off his chest, if he can rise to the occasion. Be human with him. Amazing, heartfelt disclosures come about when you start human conversations about topics like fear.
"And it shouldn't be this hard just to do your job, of course. In business, being powerful should not a matter of being smarter or more accomplished than people under you. That's all crazy fear-based management baloney. The whole idea of leadership is that when you get awesome people, you just say to them, 'Go be awesome!' Then, with that encouragement, you stand by and let them do great things."
"But that's a real problem, " said Kate. "Now that I think about it, my boss was definitely copied on the email when the VP of Sales invited me to speak at his offsite, and he never mentioned getting it."
"Oh shocker, Miss Kate!" I laughed.
At the end of the call, Kate told me she now feels a soft spot for her fearful boss. She never meant to intimidate him. And the wonderful thing about the story is that at no point did Kate think "I'll tamp down my flame so as not to agitate my boss." That's the great thing about growing your mojo — you realize that if one job goes away, another one will appear.
当你威胁到上司时。
凯特，一个33岁市场助理，声音听起来充满了无奈和困惑。“这简直是世界上最奇怪的事了，”她说，“十个月前我开始了工作，并且有一个很好的开端。我推出我们公司的第一个HTML通讯，展开了一个顾客服务培训的计划，并得到了很高的评价。六个月的绩效考核，我的成绩非常显著。然而两个月后，整件事发生了实质性的改变。”
“怎么会这样？”我充满疑问。
“我的老板开始在一些小的、愚蠢的事情上找我的麻烦，”她说。“他在我的审核会议上告诉我，他打算派我去法国公司，帮助他们建立一个通讯战略，当我最近又问起这件事时，他说‘还有一些事需要考虑’，说完就走了。好像我已经不是他最喜欢的员工了。”
“从你的审核会议上到这周期间发生了什么吗？”我好奇的问。
“没什么特别的，”凯特说。“我有了一点名气，在年度销售会议上，我被邀请发言...”
“停！”我激动的说，“谁邀请你的？”
“我们的销售副总裁，”凯特回答。“我和他在一起工作过很多次，他看到我与一些客户服务代表交谈过。在一项大的销售业务中，我跟随我们区域的销售经理一同参与了，并成功签下合同，所以他也因为这个原因对我称赞不停。这好棒--我们同事告诉我说，他们通常不会让像我这样的经销人员在销售会议上露面，更别提发言了。”
“那么，最近还有什么特别的事吗？”
“没有什么特别的，”她说。“我在销售团队里建立了一个内部讨论社区，我想应该会有用的。还把CEO和副总裁的发言内容记录下来，整理在一个目录中，以便我们可以提前参考，在与顾客交谈时可以使用。”
“姐姐，拜托！”我大声说。“你工作的十个月里，你一直在做一些了不起的事情，并在公司发挥主角作用。难怪你的老板吓坏了，他担心你会胜过他。”
“不，那听起来很荒谬，”凯特不以为然。“我的老板已经在公司工作二十八年了。”
“真可笑！”我说。“你们的副总裁让你在年度销售会议上发言，你独自把他们的发言内容记录并整理出来，你推出一个业务通讯，建立了一个培训计划，你甚至还没有工作一年，那些时间里，你的老板要做什么？”
“我想...”凯特开始说道。“我没想那么多，但为什么他会担心呢?拜托，他是行政主管啊。”
“所以他觉得自己处在危险中，”我解释道。“他要面对很多未知的问题，并不知道你从中参与进来会怎么样。你突然推出一个HTML通讯，你的老板并不清楚如何操作，如果有一天你辞职了，他要面对什么样的状况。你所做的事情都超出了他的预料，难道你不认为你已经威胁到他的利益了吗？”
“但他不能因为这就猜想我想代替他的位置啊？”凯特说。“我只是为了在工作中获得更多的乐趣。”
“首先，你的老板并不知道你想要什么，”我开始解释说，“如果他对你产生恐惧的话，不管你怎么解释都是无济于事的。如果你说你不想代替他的位置，他是不会相信的，因为恐惧是一种情绪，并不是理性的思考。他甚至会想，你做了那么多了不起的事情，然后离开公司，这会让他因为你的辞职而变得很糟糕。当你五岁的时候，他就已经在工作了--他安于现状，而你所思考的远远超过了他。面对现实吧，你这种人会吓死他那种人的。”
“啊呀，你说对了，”凯特大叫，“我要怎样才能让他不担心呢？”
“很难做到，”我说。“当你很出风头时，人们就会特别注意你。当像你这种头脑活跃、富有新意的人加入到一个安于现状的团队时，你们能够轻易的打乱他们原本的工作状态。有时候你们甚至会让他们不得不辞职；有时候你们也会使工作核心发生转变，让他们重新制定新的工作方式；有时候你们会让老板感到不安，最后以伙伴的身份看着具有高魔力的同事。”
“所以你的建议是做好应对一切的准备吗?”凯特充满疑问。
“一点也不，”我回答，“那种方法对于像你这样的人太被动了，我的建议是做你已经正在做的事情，让公司的人知道你具有那方面的能力。然后当你有足够自信的时候，坦诚的对待你的老板。以‘有时我想，我的做事风格和方法会让你不舒服’这样的话开头。如果他能镇定自如，那么就很容易让他说出真心话。和他聊聊吧。令人惊奇的是，当你和他开始交谈时，泄露内心的话题就会表现出来，比如恐惧。”
“当然，仅做你的工作应该没有那么困难。在企业里，强大并不是要更聪明或比在你之下的人更有成就。那些所有对疯狂的、基于恐惧的管理都是胡扯。所有领导的想法就是：当你得到了一群很棒的人，你只用对他们说，‘好样的，继续努力！’有这样的鼓励，你就站在一边，让他们做一些重要的事情。”
“但这真的是个问题，”凯特说，“现在我知道了，我的老板一定拷贝了销售副总裁邀请我去发言的邮件，但他从来没有提起过。”
“噢，这真可怕，凯特小姐!”我笑着说。
通话结束后，凯特告诉我说，现在她对她的老板感觉很亲切。她从来没想过去威胁到他。故事的美妙之处在于凯特从来不会想着：“为了不让我的老板焦虑，我要让自己不那么出众。”那能大大增长你的魔力--你知道，如果没有这份工作，就会有另外一份。
