One of the hardest parts of being a manager is learning that management goes both ways. Yes, you are managing a team and perhaps managers of teams, but you are also managing your manager.
It’s common for managers to struggle with this, especially when it comes to aligning with their managers. Your manager reaches out to you on Slack and demands that an important customer wants something done now. How do you align with that?
There are no correct answers for every situation, but I like to think of alignments as being at three levels, from least to most desirable:
- Just Do It—This is where without question you get your manager’s request done as quickly as possible.
- Understand, Disagree, Do It Anyway—This is where you seek to understand and empathize with your manager about why the request exists but disagree and execute anyway.
- Understand, Agree, Do It—This is where you seek to understand and empathize with your manager and realize that if you were her, you would do that same thing.
Let’s break down each of these in more detail:
Level 1: Just Do It
Sometimes when your manager comes out of nowhere with an emergency, and you haven’t built up an understanding of your manager’s issues, you’ll need to jump into action and just do things immediately. You won’t always have the luxury of understanding why or thinking about it deeply.
Team Communication
In this situation, you should tell your team the facts. For example, you’ll say “Customer X needs this thing right now and leadership has asked us to drop everything on this.” If your team pushes back that this is dumb, tell them that it very well might be, and you’ll make sure that we have a retrospective after this to figure out how to improve, but for now, we must take action.
You shouldn’t tell everyone that you thought it through and that “I want you to do this.” That may sound like what managers need to do, but what you’re really doing in this situation is eroding trust with your team. You’re also making yourself look like an ineffective leader to them.
Don’t Overdo This
If you consistently find yourself in this phase, you’re setting yourself up for failure. To your team, you come across as a yes person who can’t think for themselves. They won’t respect you.
To your management, you come across as a non-strategic cog in the machine, and not ready for growth. This is counterintuitive; by giving your management exactly what they want without question you are setting yourself up for career stagnation and a team that does not respect you.
Sometimes Just Do It
However, if you only try to be strategic and get to the next level, you’ll get yourself in trouble. Sometimes things are truly emergencies, and we don’t have time to investigate why things are the way they are. Other times you lack the context and relationship with your manager in order to know what the right questions are. And you just do it and execute. There is a time and a place for this!
Level 2: Understand, Disagree, Do It Anyway
Ideally, when requests come your way, you can have some time to understand why you need to take the requested action. This is preferred because it will give you credibility with your team and will enable you to drive the right outcome for your organization.
Team Communication
The communication with your team in this situation is much clearer. You can say “Customer X needs this thing right now because without it, they will miss an important quarterly target, and because we have a renewal coming up for their next quarter. As a result, we need to drop everything and take action on this.” See how much better that is? You can actually field questions on this now!
Disagreement is Healthy
You might find yourself uncomfortable with disagreeing with the decision. Perhaps you thought in the situation above that you should tell the customer and sales to calm down because in six weeks you’ll deliver that release that will solve so many of these problems, and you’ll still get the sale.
This is a great place to be! When you disagree with leadership, but understand why they made the decision they made, it means that you are thinking at the next level! If you want to be a next-level leader, start here!
Sometimes Values Differ
Sometimes the real reason why your leadership decides what actions to take is based on values you disagree with. Perhaps they are taking this action because they are afraid, and you don’t share their fear. Or they don’t value people as much as you do. Sometimes they value people more than you do. Either way, this is a great place to be because you’ve done the hard work of understanding why people are doing what they are doing, and that builds empathy and helps you communicate reality to your team.
Level 3: Understand, Agree, Do It
This is the best place to be—you’re given a request, you have taken months to understand your leadership’s context on why they think the way they think, and you agree with their decision.
Team Communication
This is where you mention your agreement explicitly. “Customer X has this problem and I think we need to take action on this.” You can confidently give the message and field all questions because since you agree with this, it’s your_idea! The risk here is that you’re _too confident and don’t leave space for others. Remember everyone you manage is seeking alignment on this scale just as you did. Leave room for those conversations, and seek to help your team find their own understanding of why.
Don’t Overdo This
If you find yourself always agreeing with leadership, you are in a dangerous place. You might not be thinking of the problem deeply enough. You might not be safe to disagree with management and therefore are subconsciously adopting whatever they say. Or you might have outgrown your position.
No matter what, disagreement is healthy. Seek to find situations where you disagree with management, and challenge yourself to think deeply about this until you find what you disagree with. The best teams I have been on have been teams where the leadership has made it safe to disagree.
Conclusion
This should give you a spectrum of how to gain alignment with your management and what to say to your team when you reach different levels. Sometimes you just have to do things and don’t have time to understand. Other times you understand and agree. Sometimes it’s in the middle. Whatever the case, do the right thing for the situation, and you’ll find that you grow as a leader over time, with a team that respects you.