Kelsey Floyd
- Perspectives is a weekly newsletter about careers, leadership, and growth by Ancestry CEO Deb Liu.
- She says your relationship with a manager can sway your promotions, salary, and reputation at work.
- Liu shares her best tips for handling a problematic manager, whether you lack support or butt heads.
The following article was originally published February 24, 2023 on Perspectives.
We've all been there: we take a new job or are reorganized into a new role, complete with a brand new manager. Every time, it can feel fraught. There was a point during my own career when I went through seven managers in a period of 2.5 years (four months of which I spent on maternity leave).
I had a rotating cast of people who were "managing" me, but I barely even had a chance to work with some of them before they moved on. My job remained largely the same as each of them came and went. This gave me a unique perspective on managers — good and bad.
Managers have an outsized impact on your career. They often decide whether you get promoted and what opportunities you get access to. They determine your rating, bonus, and equity. They can give you a chance to advance, or they can hold you back. What they say about you when you're not around dictates how others see you. They are the lynchpin to your success at the company where you work.
I have been a difficult manager to more than one person in my career, and I have also worked under more than one difficult manager. But difficult is in the eyes of the beholder. Some of the managers I found the most difficult to work with were people who others found to be amazing mentors and sponsors. On the flip side, some of the managers I learned the most from frustrated my peers and colleagues.
When it comes to your career success, having a strong relationship with your manager is absolutely critical. So what do you do when you find yourself butting heads, lacking support, or even dreading coming in to work for them? Below are a few strategies for navigating speed bumps in your relationship with your manager and making the most out of this challenging situation.
Know what they care about
So often, when I coach people who reach out to me, they start to complain about their managers. As we talk through it, I will ask them, "What do you think your manager values?" Most of them have no idea.
You can't get to alignment with someone if you don't understand their point of view. A lot of times when entering a manager relationship, you feel the need to explain everything you're doing, but you fail to ask two critical things: what does your manager care about, and what are they optimizing for? In an ideal situation, those two things are in alignment, but you would be surprised how often they are actually at odds with each other.
In these situations, rather than coming to your manager with a list of things you want, make a point to be curious. Ask them what they are optimizing for. Then ask them how you can help. Seek to be their ally and find ways to align your work with their goals. Sometimes it can be tempting to set your own agenda, but if you can find a way to make your work a win-win for them, your relationship will be much less fraught.
Some managers value being seen as great mentors; thus, they want to open up opportunities for you and help you grow. But if you are resistant to their guidance, they may not see you as worth investing in. Some managers value control and saving face, so any signs that you are going around them may trigger their defensiveness. Other managers value loyalty above all else, and don't like their team disagreeing with them in public. Few managers will say out loud what their true desires or insecurities are, because they don't actually know how to articulate them.
When you've recently changed managers, setting a strong foundation for your working relationship should always be the first thing you do. Your goal is to take those first few meetings and use them to learn the following:
- What are their expectations
- How they like to work with their team
- Their triggers and pet peeves
- Concerns or questions they may have about you or your role
Sometimes it is worth just setting the table and asking if you can do a meet and greet. Ask your manager if you can get to know them, then spend time with them to learn about their likes, dislikes, and expectations. It's never too late to do this, and it can be extremely helpful for getting on the same page, even if you've been working with someone for a while.
Know what they want from you
Sometimes, our relationships with our managers go sideways because we have mismatched expectations about what work we're trying to do. This is particularly difficult if you have a very nebulous role or a set of responsibilities that are vastly different from your manager's goals.
I was once working on an important company-level initiative when a new manager came in. Though I was on their team, the work I was doing was different from that of their other reports. They wanted me to conform my work to their team structure and processes, but I resisted. I continued to work on what I thought should be done, and they continued to grow increasingly frustrated. It got to the point where we were barely tolerating working together because I stood my ground and they kept pushing me to do things their way. This was a recipe for frustration for both of us.
Eventually, this began to affect my rating and job satisfaction, because my manager disagreed with how I approached things. I even went to get guidance from HR on how to "constructively disagree with my manager."
The HR lead replied, "Nobody dares to disagree with [your manager]." Ouch.
The thing is, my manager was very good at what they did, but I came from another part of the organization, where we did things completely differently—and got similar results. I found their desire to force my team into their processes to be a waste of time, and they found my lack of desire to align to be out of sync and disrespectful.
When you and your manager aren't on the same page, you can feel it. Your one-on-ones are difficult rather than easy. Making progress feels like you are swimming through molasses. They're constantly pushing while you're constantly pulling.
How do you resolve this? Find a way to nail down your goals. Having a joint definition of success that's both documented and written down is critical here. Often, we walk out of conversations (especially conversations with our managers!) leveraging strategic ambiguity. Rather than forcing ourselves to get on the same page, we allow ourselves to avoid getting concrete answers and leave the situation in limbo.
On the other hand, when you document and align on metrics and successes, there is no moving the goalposts. There can be no pretending that you did not achieve what you have set out to achieve, or claiming that you're working on the wrong thing. It is all documented and noted down for both of you to see. This can seem like a small step, but it will save you more grief and frustration than you can imagine.
See if you can hit the reset button
Sometimes two people just get off on the wrong foot. For one reason or another, something you say or do annoys the other person — or vice versa. Once that happens, everything from then on suddenly seems way more difficult than it has to be.
Things may eventually come to the point where you have to hit the reset button in order to move forward. That's when it's time to sit down with your manager and say, "I feel like we are not on the same page. I want to talk through this disconnect in our next 1:1 meeting." By calling the problem out, you are revealing the elephant in the room and giving them a fair warning that you want to fix the situation.
Before you walk into that conversation, remember to document what it is that you want to talk about. In the heat of the moment, it can be easy to forget things or get caught up in your emotions, so prepare carefully to ensure you are not missing any key details. As I mentioned in my last point, this prevents strategic ambiguity and gets your agenda down in black and white, forcing you to address the issue head-on.
Now it's time to present your case to your manager. Actively listen to them when they respond, and remember to be curious about their point of view, which may be different from yours—but that doesn't always make it wrong. Ask them to work with you to hit the reset button and align together on a new set of expectations.
Know when to call it quits
Some relationships are just not meant to be. If you've put time and honest effort into resolving the situation, but you still feel like you can't get on the same page as your manager, then it may be time to pull the plug. I have coached many people who have been in this situation. The stories and experiences they share signal to me that trying to move forward is like pushing a rock uphill. Even still, a vast majority of the people I say this to tell me they want to keep working at it. For those who stay in these untenable situations, most end up wishing they had left earlier.
If you've reached a place where your relationship with your manager is so broken that you have to call on somebody from the outside for help, it is usually a sign that things are in trouble. In these cases, it can be tempting to fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy. But at the end of the day, although your manager can be invaluable to your career, they can also be the biggest obstacle to your success. If things can't be resolved, then it may be time to cut your losses.
Many times, you will see a broken manager-direct report relationship due to extremely different work styles. In my post earlier this week, I told you the story of how the former manager of someone on my team told me during his transition that they found him dishonest and unreliable. We were two managers in the same organization who were working with the same person, and yet we had completely different views of him. Later, I asked him what he thought of working with her, and he replied that she had a very specific interface: either you plugged right in or you missed the connection altogether. I am not sure any amount of effort on his part could have changed her perception of him, because his style was so different from hers. In the end, he thrived after moving to my team and then went on to have a strong partnership with his next manager as well.
If you've already tried everything you can, it is not a failure on your part to cut the cord. Unless there is a specific reason you must continue to work with that person as your manager, it is absolutely okay to call it quits and find something else that's a better fit, whether in the organization or the industry at large. In the long run, you will probably be glad you did.
Over the course of your career, you will likely have a dozen managers, if not more. I have had more than two dozen over the last two decades. Each new manager brings new perspectives and opportunities to learn, but a bad relationship with them can derail your career and hurt your long-term prospects. Taking the time to understand your manager, align with them, and work on your relationship is critical.
Difficult manager relationships are difficult because they are a meeting of two people who come from entirely different points of view. The sense of frustration and helplessness you feel when you report to someone who dismisses you, or who doesn't understand your work, can taint an otherwise great job. Identifying the sources of conflict, and then deciding if you can address them, will put control back into your hands.
Deb Liu is CEO of Ancestry and a Silicon Valley tech executive of nearly two decades. Read more in her Substack newsletter, Perspectives.