We all want to work with great boss’s, few of us felt in our career at least once that our boss is learning from us rather than we getting mentored by him. Always we get a feeling that we are capable of reporting to our supervisor’s boss.
Reason being you want to learn more and grow like him, you always wanted to work with your role model boss. Why you want to work for a great boss? a) Something you will learn professionally and personally, b) understanding various situations he has experienced and his handling capabilities etc. But what if you understood quickly that your manager is not good at his Job or you realized that you are not learning anything.
What if you feel you are more competent or have greater skills than your manager? How will you handle this kind of situation? Should you be raising concern to his next level or keep your head down and work? Or would you be able to get what you want without making your supervisor look bad? I was reading / browsing what industry experienced professional say and observed the following:
What you should do:
1. Be a Great Performer / Best at what you do
Before you decide on your boss that he is an incapable manager and hired by management with an urgency to fill this position, we have to introspect how good we are at work. Go back and compare that what made your management to believe that you still have improvement areas. Continue your performance if you are consistent and start taking feedbacks from your management on the areas of improvement to build their confidence.
You need to continue and keep your efforts increasing on the areas you lack. Time for filling the gaps.
2. Good work to be documented
Typical bosses like these try to use your work and represent them as their and showcase. While you can’t avoid these situations, important for you to document all your hardwork to show whenever is required for further usage. Most of the times when they know that you can be a threat for his role, these kind of bosses try to push you in bad light.
For all the above reasons, required you to be careful and document each and every good work you do.
3. Think of your function and help team members
If you want to be a leader then never work only your work or for your supervisor only, think bigger picture and work for the overall function benefit. The moment we feel tough to work with your incompetent boss most of the cases we leave the firm or change the role, with this you are making other team members struggle the same you experienced. Hence work hard and help the team members and be a guide.
You time will come to be a leader for sure as you have competency as well as right feedback from team.
4. Learn from your Mentor / Guide
When you realized that you are not learning anything from your boss, Start spending more time with your Mentor / Guide you created already. If none there then identify one and start sharing what you are going through in day to day basis at your profession. He will guide you to handle situation better or make you realize not to take wrong calls at least.
But this also makes you understand learning what not to do as a boss.
5. Be Self – Motivated Leader
Before you declare your boss as an incompetent leader, take a close look at what’s really happening, there could be a reason management have taken a call to hire above you and some skills he / she possess. Ask yourself if you are genuinely smarter than your manager. Or you may be good at some areas which is most important but your manager may be good at the areas you need an improvement. Need serious introspection before you come to conclusion.
One example I would like to quote: where I felt management announced a leader is not capable enough and had almost 4hrs discussion with my MD with lots of frustration. After the discussion, I have reluctantly agreed to work with an condition that 6 months if don’t see any learning from him/her then I will quit. After spending a year realized while by judgement is almost right but I learned few areas I am not good at all. It helped me to improve overall function with his / her approach. Be honest with yourself about what skills you have and which your boss lacks.
“Being smarter than your boss doesn’t mean you’re going to be more effective,” says Hill. After all, to be good at your job, you don’t just need smarts. “You need experience, strong relationships, social capital, and emotional intelligence,” she says.
7. Maintain cool at work
If after reflecting on the situation, you conclude that you’re actually smarter or more qualified, think twice before talking to anyone about it. Most of the time you will get exhausted as you will be doing double job hence frustration keep hitting the roof. In this frustrating mood you want to put up this situation to next levels but understand most of the time your boss will win-over you if you don’t follow cool minded and keep a strong business case. In this situation most of the time you vent out your frustration to few of your colleagues but be careful. “if your boss senses that you are critical and threat to her / him then your relationship is over”
Maintain yourself cool and take calls only after proper introspection and thinking and not when you are frustrated.
8. Help your boss be better
There’s no reason not to be nice when your management decides that he is better person than you and hired him/her as your boss. If your boss is successful, there’s a greater chance that you’ll be successful too. You should be complementing with your expertise rather than pulling him down or showing him in low light. If he is not seeing bigger picture make him understand how to make it successful.
Few leaders comments:
My interactions in last few decades with few of my colleagues, leaders and few of their suggestions drafted down while dealing with “Average Competent Boss”.