I’m Still Amazed at the Boss that Wants to be Liked
I've been in a lot of different business situations in my life - at the bottom, in the middle, at the top, big place, small place, conservative place, educational institution - and still I have to say that I'm amazed when I run into a boss that seems to need to have his people agree with him on a course of action.
Case in point: several years ago I was building an interface to a new ticker source from a group in the larger bank. There was an issue about what data to retain, and I thought that the existing model was fine, but a manager (not mine) in the Shop decided that we needed to retain more - specifically, an additional price.
He explained it and while I understood that I would be forced to do it, I wasn't about to agree that it was a good idea - it wasn't. But that didn't matter. If I had wanted to stay in a position where I was the one making the decisions, I'd have stayed there. I moved for a reason, and this was one of the things I knew I'd have to live with, and I was fine with it. The problem was, he wanted me to think it was a good idea. He just kept at it, and at it to get me to see this as a good idea.
Finally, my manager said "Give it up... Bob's going to do it, but he's not going to agree it's a good idea." He understood. Good.
Today was right along these same lines - even the same manager was involved. They asked me to coordinate all the development of a particular feature. I got all that tested and coordinated the two other guys and they said their stuff was done and tested. So I told one user to kick the tires and see what they thought. Interestingly, there was a difference in the two ways this package was executing the code, so there was a difference to the user. Nothing big, in my mind - we'll get it fixed as soon as the vendor's rep gets back to us about how to make them work the same.
But this manager told everyone we hadn't completed testing on the additions and to hold off testing. Seemed a bit excessive to me, but he's the manager, so I simply wrote back - 'Hey, we tested it, didn't find this, so we'll fix it.' And then the "please agree with me" chain started.
Over the next hour, about half a dozen emails went back and forth about the true state of the testing. I tried to explain that we did test it. But if he wants to be the final tester before anything is shown to the users, then just say so. Yet he continued to want to get me to agree that we hadn't tested it properly.
OK guy, get over it. You want to be liked, then be liked. You want to be the Boss, then be the Boss. But don't expect to be able to be the Boss and have everyone like you. You asked someone (me) to make the call, and then didn't like the call. OK, make the call yourself, but don't expect me to say I made a bad call... I just made one you wouldn't make.
Yikes... just be a bloody manager and say what you want.