How to Manage Your Manager: All the Credit, Half the Work

​​Introduction

A long, long time ago, more specifically in the year 1998, I started working as a customer service agent at a telephone company call center. My role was simple, come in on time, log in, answer questions as they arrive, take a break at the allotted break time, and go home. Every minute of my time throughout the day was tracked. If I logged out for a break too early or logged in too late, or if I took more than the allotted exceptions, my manager would have a talk with me. If I exceeded my average handle time with a customer too often, my manager would have a talk with me. If my average hold time was too long, my manager would have a talk with me. If I did anything outside of the clearly documented list of policies, my manager would have a talk with me. If my manager had too many talks with me, I would receive a write up and other disciplinary actions. At first, I played along with the game, being very happy when my average handle times (AHT) were some of the lowest on the team. I would relish the rewards they put in place for those, like myself, who exceeded all the defined goals of call times, handle times, and other KPIs (key performance indicators). However, I found the rewards I received for being a top performer didn’t equate to the amount of time and energy I was putting into being one.

It was at that call center I met Brendan. He had been with the company a year or so longer than me, and so he received the premium choice of desks in our team area—next to the window. Brendan and I would stand and toss foam balls back and forth while explaining to our customers how to calculate a prorated invoice. We would head out after work for drinks at Canyons, the local bar, for the phone grunts that we were. And we would occasionally carpool to work, knowing that we both had to be logged into the IVR (interactive voice response) within two minutes of our scheduled start time.

Brendan also became my first mentor in the corporate world. I didn’t think of him as a mentor, to me he was just a good friend showing me the ropes. Prior to that it was a long list of jobs from pizza delivery driver, to walking lab samples from one department to another in a hospital. They were all jobs that I took too seriously, causing frustration and conflict on my part. It was in the corporate world, as a call center employee, that I learned a valuable lesson, one that Brendan taught me, a lesson of trying to get away with as much as I could whenever possible. He got me started on a long road of learning to work the system while working within the system. A bit of malicious compliance. If a company is going to monitor every move a person makes, and everything a person says, we should at least have a little fun trying to get away with as much as possible—a bit like high school.

Whenever there is a chance to sign up for team incentives, do it. He told me one day as we were logged out of our telephony systems. Hey Andy, he said to one of the other team managers as we walked up. You guys interested in having a contest with our team to see who has the best call times? After Andy agreed, we walked to the next manager repeating this process as slowly as possible. With each team manager, we might challenge them to average call times, or average time in Aux. The metric wasn’t important, and it usually involved the losing team providing a potluck lunch for both teams. What mattered was the time we spent headset free, not having to listen to customers complain about the lack of coverage our wireless phone company offered, or the roaming charges. This was in the late 90s, before the era of national calling.

Another good one is decorating the team area for holidays. Not only do you get to take time to do the decorating, you have to get the decorations. This one he told me while we were cutting turkey and other thanksgiving themed items out of paper, and taping them around all the desks.

What Brendan taught a young man (me), who previously believed in working hard, doing your best, and going above and beyond whenever possible, is that being an over-achiever only irritates people. He taught me that a person can be just as successful in life cutting corners, as those who work hard and overachieve. These were all valuable lessons I carried with me throughout the rest of my career.

In the business aisle of most bookstores—assuming there is still a bookstore where you live—you will find plenty of publications written by professionals with a long list of credentials next to their names. The books written by these experts are usually on the subject of how to be a good manager and leader. They offer advice on how to hire the best people, and how to get the best out of those who work in the organization. Most noticeably, the books are how-to guides on inspiring others and moving ahead within a company. Occasionally, a book on the subject of managing your manager is slipped in as well. These books often explain how to move ahead within a company, they just have a different title and list of credentials next to the authors’ name.

I don’t have a problem with those books as a whole. Most actually do include some useful advice for being successful in the corporate environment, and offer good advice on how to work well with others. All of which is intended to help people achieve corporate success. I guess my problem with a lot of those books, that I hope to address in this one, is they take themselves too seriously. The authors try to come off as experts on the subject of working in a corporate environment, generally glossing over the comedy of errors that is the corporate world. This book is about those errors, it is about the lessons learned from someone who has done the job both well and poorly. The experts (the ones who have actually worked in business) write the books, implying that they were great at working with their manager, and since they were so good at it they wrote a book to teach everyone else how to do the same. This book, however, describes a bit about how great I was in the corporate environment, and a lot about how I was not-so-great in the corporate environment. 

For every manager in a company, there is a group of people who work for him or her. The average manager will usually have eight to ten direct reports; ​[i] not all are looking to become the next boss, but most are looking to be successful in their job. Many people simply work with the intent of making a decent income and enjoying life from that income. They are not necessarily interested in telling others how to do their job. Those who fall into that category look to provide their families with a decent home, a regular vacation, and maybe pay a bit of their children’s college education. To provide this financial stability doesn’t necessarily involve climbing the corporate ladder to a leadership position. But it does involve earning a decent amount of money through annual pay raises, and through staying employed over the long term.

Successfully managing your managers does not involve telling your bosses what you actually think of them, it doesn’t involve coming in late, taking excessive coffee breaks, and generally doing as little as possible. Yet, if you are the person who comes in late and does as little as possible, you still need to convince those around you that you are showing up on time and going above and beyond the call of duty. You convince your managers, and others, that you are a top performer while doing less, by being the one who decorates the team area with turkeys. 

The corporate ladder is a misnomer in my opinion. The corporate world equates to a pyramid more than a ladder. The larger base of employees is what supports the top of the pyramid, which is known as the CEO and executive board. The CEO (chief executive officer) is the tip of the pyramid, which then flows down to the mass grouping of employees at the bottom known as the rest of us.

So, where are all the books on how to be a good employee, and how to be successful while not working your way to the top? I've done some searching and I was able to find a few books and articles on the subject of being a good employee, and getting your manager to work for you. Many of those books have similar titles to this one. But for the most part no one writes those books, because we have been taught to always be moving ahead in the corporate world. Annual evaluations and reviews usually involve a conversation about where to next. And if you were to tell a peer you are happy where you are, they might look at you as if something is wrong with you.

I once worked with a guy who was happy in his role as a call center representative, answering customers’ questions all day long. He always received the schedule he wanted, since he been with the company for so long; it usually involved four 10-hour shifts and three days off.  He was good at his job, always getting high ratings for customer satisfaction, and he viewed the job as low stress. Come in, do the job, go home and enjoy the rest of life. Yet when asked where he wanted to go next, and he said he was fine where he was, people looked at him as though there was something wrong with him. He didn’t want to move ahead, he was happy and content where he was.

I would hazard a guess from my time in the corporate world, for every person who views a management role as something to achieve, there is another person who views management positions as something to be avoided. The avoiders often look at management as more stress and work that they don’t want. Yet, we are taught that success involves moving up.

Outside of the office, we discuss what we do for a living, often bragging to our friends about the number of people we manage, as if it makes us more important. We talk about the difficult workload we have, implying that we are the only ones who do the job as well as we do it. We show off the cars we buy, and other tangible items, so that people can see our success.  We want to make the big bucks because we want to get the biggest house with the biggest TV, and gain the envy and respect of our peers.

(House sq ft/Job Title)Salary = Success

So, what do we need to do in order to achieve this success? Should we buy the books and watch the videos on being a successful leader, on moving up in the corporation, and everything else that is pitched to us on the subject? We could if that is what we want. At various points in my life, that is what I wanted. I wanted to manage a coffee shop when I was in the coffee business, I wanted to manage a team when I was in the software business, and even now I manage people in the photography and film business. Sometimes I will buy those books in order to improve my ability to motivate people. Other times I don’t want to be a manager. Sometimes I just want to go in on a given day and blankly stare at my computer monitor for the first few hours. What I don’t want, is for others to know that what I am doing for the first few hours of my day, is listening to Portishead while blankly staring at the trees outside the window.

Let's be real, most of us are employees, and most of us are going to stay employees. Sorry to burst your bubble and your dreams of winning the corner office, along with your dreams of winning the lottery each week. Even as we work our way up the corporate pyramid, there will usually still be someone above us who gets to tell us what to do. That person has the better office, bigger house, and fancier car. Remember the 1%? The 1% is the top of the pyramid, the rest of it is the rest of us. We are the people who come in each day and do the actual work that makes the managers and executives look good. It is us that make the leaders great leaders, and we make the companies that we work for bigger and more valuable. We might move up to a leadership position or we might not. Some of us want to move up and some of us don't.

In life, not everyone should be in a management position. Maybe the current manager knew the right person or played golf with the right executive. Maybe they have the degree that makes it seem as though they know what they are doing, but really only proves that they were able to sit in a room, and retain information long enough to pass a test at the end of the term. For every great manager, there are twice as many mediocre or even bad ones. Good and bad managers need great employees, because without great employees everyone fails. For small companies, this could mean going out of business. For large companies, this could mean the team being made redundant and laid off, just because a single bad manager didn’t make the team look good. Is it all the bad managers’ fault? Perhaps it is. But some of the fault is also ours for not taking the initiative and managing that manager in a way that gets the best out of them. It doesn't really matter in the end how that manager reached their position within the company. What matters is that they are there. They might only be there for a short time, or they might not move into another role for a very long time. You might only work for that person for a few weeks, or months, or you might be working with that person for years. In any amount of time it is your responsibility to be as successful as possible, even if you are only in the chair for the paycheck.

Some managers truly do know what they are doing, and deserve to be in that position. These are the ones we want to work for, the ones that require less work on our part. I've worked for good people and it is rewarding to know that the person is there for me and wants me to succeed. As with each good manager, I could name one who was just the opposite. I could tell stories, and I will tell a few of them in this book, about the ones who would throw me under the bus in order to make him or her look good. I have worked for people who could not care less about my success in an organization, and were only focused on themselves.  I will also relay a few stories of the great managers