A reader writes:
When I first started my job two years ago, I was on a design team with one other man, “Frank,” who had started a few months before me. For the first six months, both of us reported directly to the director of marketing, “Rebecca.” At six months, Frank pushed hard for a promotion to become creative services manager and was promoted by Rebecca.
I was frustrated when this promotion occurred because Frank, who is now my manager, is very much a people-pleaser — essentially anything people ask for, he does, without asking discerning questions to find out whether what they’re asking for is the appropriate solution. He does not ask for deadlines and will often just work on whatever is dropped in his lap, whether or not there is something more pressing.
I moved beyond the frustration and grew accustomed to the new role structure, but over the next year Rebecca increasingly expressed frustrations (in meetings with Frank that he would describe to me later) that deadlines were being missed and projects not being attended to the way she would like. A year after Frank’s promotion, Frank met with me to tell me that Rebecca would like me to be in charge of assigning projects to our department (we had recently taken on a third designer). I had a meeting with Rebecca to discuss what that might entail, and she was very clear that she wanted all project requests to go through me and for me to assign the work out to myself, Frank, and our third designer. Rebecca also said that Frank’s main focus would now be the website and photography, but would pitch in on design work “as needed.” Rebecca also requested that I track all work that comes in.
My current frustration is that despite multiple “gentle reminders,” Frank still does not direct people to me to discuss project requests. If people request anything of him, he takes infrequent notes and will often just start working on the project, despite that fact that he has other more pressing deadlines for the website, etc. He recently sent me an email to ask if he could work on a very large, multi-month print project because “it’s his favorite project.”
To me, this situation seems incredibly awkward and problematic. Why wouldn’t the manager be the person responsible for assigning work? When I floated this by HR, they did not seem to think it was an issue at all. Rebecca also brushed off my initial concerns, saying that it would be career development for me.
Am I crazy for thinking this is an unusual and inappropriate set-up?
You’re not crazy — Rebecca is asking you to be the stealth manager because she doesn’t want to deal with the fact that Frank isn’t doing his job.
Unfortunately for you, you don’t actually have the authority to manage Frank, who is in desperate need of management, and Rebecca apparently isn’t willing to do it even though it’s her job.
I would sit down with Rebecca and say this: “I want to talk about your request that I track work and ensure it’s being done. I would be glad to do this, but I’m hitting a wall with Frank, and I’ve tried everything I can with the amount of authority I have, but it’s not working. I’ve done X, Y, and Z to try to get Frank to redirect project requests to me, but he continues not to. He also is regularly ignoring deadlines and the way we’ve prioritized work. It’s at the point where to get him to comply, I’d need more authority than I have. But he’s my boss — if he chooses not to go along with what I’m doing and asking of him, I’m not able to insist.”
You could add, “I feel like I’m being asked to manage aspects of Frank’s work without the authority to do it.”
If she tells you that you just need to push harder with Frank, you can say, “I get that that’s what someone who was his manager would do. But in this case, I report to him, and I’m concerned about causing real issues with him as my boss if I do that.”
Frankly, if you’d be up for this, you could even say something like, “If you thought it made sense to give me authority over Frank’s work in this area (or move me to a different manager), that would equip me to address this, but otherwise I don’t think we have a workable system.”
From there, Rebecca will either act or she won’t. It’s possible — maybe even likely — that having this conversation and laying out the situation starkly will indeed push her to revisit how she’s managing Frank. But if she’s truly a wimp (and we already have evidence that she might be), this might not change anything. If that’s the case, all you can really do is let Rebecca know that you can’t manage Frank on this stuff when he refuses to go along with it, and then do what you can without worrying about the rest of it.
Eventually this will come to a head one way or another — Rebecca will get sick of dealing with him, or someone above her will notice that Frank is messing up workflow and deadlines, or this set-up will otherwise reach its natural destructive conclusion. All you can really do from your position is to be straightforward with Rebecca about the situation and let her decide if she’s going to step up and manage or not.
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I’m in charge of assigning work to my manager, but he won’t do it was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.