Here are three letters asking my sage (ha!) advice about coping with idiot sales managers. Because the answers are straightforward, I’m bundling them into a single post.
Before getting into it, I suppose I should mention that my best general advice about coping with managers can be found in the BNET article “How to Manage Your Boss.”
However, that article started with the assumption that your boss was worth cultivating.
Unfortunately, nothing is sure in this world except death, taxes and lousy managers, as these letters clearly prove.
A reader writes:
Your articles make a lot of sense and I learn a lot from them. I need your suggestion on handling my immediate supervisor. I feel that he takes the entire credit of the work that I do and never acknowledges my contribution. How should I correct the situation?
Stealing credit always demotivates people to the point where productivity suffers. Good managers realize that good management means making other people successful and look successful. However, you’re not without recourse. Document everything that you do and send a weekly or monthly status report to everyone in the organization and (if you can get away with it) your boss’s boss. Any time ANYBODY tells you that you’ve done a good job, request that they send a note to your manager, with a copy to whomever handles your HR file. When you come up for review, if your employee review doesn’t reflect the work that you’ve done, insist that your status reports be included in your employee file.
A reader writes:
My boss sends everyone out onto the field and asks them to fight for the team. However, he has recently brought in fresh faces with no experience but a lot of paper qualifications, and put them over all of us. They do not know jack, but he thinks it helps the company image that they have lofty degrees. How do I remain relevant?
Any real-life manager who values an MBA over practical experience is incredibly confused. Not to worry. What you do in this case is wait them out. Since these guys “do not know jack,” they will eventually screw up and get the boot. (Warning: make sure they don’t frame you for their failures and, for God’s sake, don’t use your experience to make them successful!) While you’re waiting, get into an MBA program. Most MBA programs are 10 percent common sense, 10 percent accounting, and 80 percent biz-blab, which has probably become the new lingua franca in your firm. If you wait long enough, they’ll be gone, you’ll have your MBA, and (unlike the “fresh faces”) you’ll still know all about your company’s business. Get your manager to pay your tuition.
A reader writes:
Our company is in a real fix. We work on commercial real estate services and the potential of our staff is amazing. The problem is that two years ago our company tried to enter the market with a big marketing campaign in the hopes that we’d secure a big lease project. We ended up losing a lot of money and, as a result, our investors have withdrawn their funding, and we have very narrow financial support. I was recently hired as director of property marketing and need to build a network of business relationships. The chairman does not wish to participate in public relations. What do you recommend?
Your boss over-spent on marketing and isn’t willing to participate in the only form of marketing that’s left — referral selling. So the short answer to this problem is: Find another job. Lousy marketing killed your company and (whether your boss realizes it or not) you’ve been hired to supervise the burial.
Readers: have any idiot boss stories you want to share?
