A boss should never be incompetent or problematic.
Your Inept Boss Could Make It Difficult For You To Be Smarter.
 |
| The person in the office is engrossed in thoughts. |
In a setup where the boss is slightly lesser competent than his sub-ordinate-he has got to depend upon his subordinate for getting through the different jobs successfully. It is not a one-time thing. The repeated dependence of the boss on his reporting subordinates proves one point for sure over some time- “his incompetency levels”.
Such bosses would always have this inferiority complex brewing in their minds towards their competent staff. In reality, one senior executive should feel himself to be lucky for having competent people reporting to him. Ideally, in such a situation, he should act like a leader and always show humility towards such a staff of competence. He should take all the care of such people and try to give them all potential opportunities to grow in their field of work endlessly.
Ideally speaking:-
Ideally, such bosses should thank them. Respect them. Give them room for growth. Recognize them for their good work and ideas. Remind yourself that management and leadership are about how you do it, not just what you do. Be firm with them and curb rude behavior. Ask formore than now. Make sure you understand the business context in which they belong. We providetraining to help you develop your skills. Don’t promote before you’re ready, and don’t hold back for your benefit.
Unfortunately, if the boss is not competent enough to deal with the way it is mentioned above, then the only thing which happens in such organizations is the loss of respect for the man holding control. Again, one very important current run between the boss and his competent sub-ordinate, of course, is the result of insecurity in the boss’s mind and dissatisfaction in the subordinate. This current brews on and on and with passaging time-if the boss does not get changed, giving rise to open neglect and disrupted office discipline.
If the Boss was smarter:-
Look at the other side of the same. If the Boss was smarter than ideally to thrive, a capable manager must be able to know their team member’s unique strengths and weaknesses, and tactically design their work so that the strengths can be capitalized while the weaknesses are minimized (or made irrelevant). The boss should be intelligent enough to find out what they need (from life, from this job, from this company) and decide how they can move forward together and help in any difficult situation.
Even Clever Staff want to be challenged:-
However, it depends on the situation. Clever staff often want to be challenged whenever it comes to paying special attention. It has received little attention, but it is certainly considered unique. In large organizations, smart employees find it difficult to accept the rate of change that we want to train to allow for extra curves of relaxation while we want to get things done and live that way. I often feel it! Even if “reasonable enough” is ideal enough, smart staff often need to improve a ton. Time and expertise can be wasted trying to complete the least practical and unimportant for perfection. Clever personnel may want to expose themselves, even if it does not help them or their mission.
Let us take the following very simple case-where the boss is not knowing the actual functioning of the segment -which she is heading and the subordinate has been giving his best and even helping his boss’s image not to get deterred.
Mrs. Gupta (Boss) and Mr. Ashok her sub-ordinate: –
Soon after Ashok became a marketing and business development manager at a financial services company, he got a new boss — he would call her Mrs. Gupta. She moved to the market from HR and had no background in the function. Ashok had to cover a lot of her work. “Even though she heads the marketing unit, I come up with the strategy to grow the business and for cutting costs,” he says. He admits it is sometimes frustrating, especially when she makes decisions that go against what he considers to be the best, based on his expertise. He does everything he can to support her and make her look good. “Humility is the way to go,” he says. “I offer help when she feels struggling with her work or ideas.” And when he proposes ideas to senior management, he often praises or praises Mrs. Gupta. At least they say they worked together. Knowing what Ashok is doing for her, she returns the favor by saying good things about her boss. This collaborative approach worked for Ashok, not combative. He is valued by his boss’s boss and has a significant responsibility at the company, even if he does not have the title of a marketing manager. Also, he has seen no other good options. “If you’re in a fight with your boss and the company values them more than you, you risk being fired,” he explains. “She has been in the company for over 10 years and I’ve only been here for eight months. After all, she’s my boss,” he says.
In the above case study, Ashok must always follow the following three actions; –
Help your boss do his job. Think of yourself as an elder.
Find something you truly admire about him.
Find other mentors to help you learn and grow.
But, Ashok should also try his best not to have the following actions for his incompetent boss: –
Assume you are more qualified than your boss. She may have skills you don’t have.
Try to take over her job. Usually, the boss wins.
Cover up serious mistakes or long-standing incompetence.
Ideal Fresher’s aspirations:-
The following are the very simple feelings/apprehensions that a fresher normally has at the time of his career initiation: – He wants to work with a great boss you admire and have a lot to learn from. But what if your boss doesn’t do his job well? What if you were more competent or had more skills? Need to make a fuss or bow your head? How can you get what you want without looking bad at your boss?
A fresher enters the corporate world with very high ambitions and aspirations. But as luck would have it-he gets an incompetent boss-all his aspirations to change into a demoralizing situation. Unfortunately, under such conditions, his getting nurtured into an efficient and smarter worker takes a big toll.
Just a brief recap of my tenure: –
When I was an RM in my earlier days, I had a very ambitious boss equally competent as well. But as the luck would have it he had a comparatively low cadre boss on him in the capacity as SM. I could also feel in my lower capacity as RM that he had an enormous challenge in carrying out his instructions-which were not of his operational ways and thinking status. He had gone into a situation where he could not tolerate the stupidity of his boss anymore. Those were the times when sycophancy was the essential qualifying criteria for the bigger jumps in one’s career and it was only later when professionalism replaced sycophancy as a matter of logic because of systems coming in place in the corporate functioning.
Later my boss had to leave the organization and his Boss who was SM, continued even more strongly for some time. My boss joined another organization and proved himself as the smarter worker there in his career. Proving the fact that your caliber pays you, although you may have to put a consistent effort to show it.
Later, when I think of myself-I joined Delhi in the 1990as as a newcomer and had almost eighty percent of field staff elder than me. What I found that slowly and steadily during the tenure of sixteen years itself, I reached a respectable position in my career as well. I also had my managers/bosses who were annoying and reflected incompetence also but somehow adaptability and perseverance helped me sail through.
Conclusion:-
In the end, I would like to summarise that each person who enters the fray has got to face such situations. But it all depends on his level of adaptability, maturity, and smartness and how he continues his career journey without really expressing any aggression or annoyance-which might have adverse effects on his career path. The genuine leaders who also rise from the bottom and face all such stuff-really are the great people always having the mission of creating the best of smarter people for the responsible positions to be held and for that, they toil hard in all ways.
“True leaders understand that leadership is not about them
But about those they serve. It is not about exalting themselves, but about lifting others.”
~Sherri L. Dew
# incompetent boss # bad boss attitude # Personal growth # Workplace Challenges # Professional Development
Author of this article: Ravi Tiku.