How To Deal With These 3 Difficult Managers At Work
One of the biggest challenges for any employee is learning how to work well with a manager. A good working relationship with your manager can increase productivity and engagement, while a bad working relationship can help inspire you to find a new job.
After all, a recent Gallup survey of 7,272 U.S. adults found one in two have left a job to get away from a bad manager and improve their overall life. That means building a working relationship with your manager is more important than ever.
When dealing with a difficult boss, understanding personality is key to identifying the best course of action to take. Here are three difficult managerial types you may encounter and what you need to know about dealing with them, so you'll never have to quit to get away from a difficult manager again:
1. Goal-Focused Gary
Goal-Focused Gary cares about only one thing: the goal he sets for himself. The problem is, he usually doesn't share that goal with his team, and that makes him difficult to deal with.
Since Gary thinks he's the most valuable employee in the company, he tends to ignore ideas he didn't come up with and rarely -- if ever -- will give you the recognition you deserve for a job well done.
Managers like Goal-Focused Gary like to be involved in every decision made in their group, so they get the credit for the team's success. In other words, you're probably going to be running all of your decisions by Gary first, no matter how experienced you are.
How to deal with Goal-Focused Gary: The trick to getting along with managers like Gary is understanding what drives them. According to Isabel Briggs Myers' theories of personality type, Goal-Focused Gary is a Thinking type, who is more focused on the task at hand than any relationships he could be building (or destroying).
Use this to your advantage. Find out what Goal-Focused Gary is trying to achieve and make sure what you do at work helps him achieve that goal. By doing so, you're showing Gary you're also interested in his success. When you show Gary you're interested in his success, your responsibilities will increase and you may end up climbing the corporate ladder with him.
2. Pleasing Patricia
Pleasing Patricia is agreeable. For her, management is all about being liked. Sounds great, right?
It is -- until you realize she's doing it because she doesn't like confrontation. When a manager is highly agreeable, it's actually pretty difficult to get things done.
Agreeableness is the "Big Five" personality trait that measures an individual's tendency toward empathy, affection, kindness, and its namesake, agreeableness. The problem is, Pleasing Patricia has it in spades. She's not just empathetic and affectionate, she's also afraid to hurt an employee's feelings or say no.
Since she's worried about hurting her employees' feelings, Pleasing Patricia will rarely give honest, constructive feedback, and she'll always avoid making decisions between competing ideas in a group setting. This lack of managerial instinct slows down productivity for the group and hurts your professional development.
How to deal with Pleasing Patricia: Your approach with a Pleasing Patricia needs to be two-pronged.
First, you've got to make an effort to assure Pleasing Patricia that, at least with you, honesty is the best policy. Explain how your goal is to be the best employee you can and how constructive feedback plays into achieving that goal. Balance your need for feedback with Pleasing Patricia's agreeable nature by encouraging her to always include one or two things you could do better when she gives you positive feedback.
Second, since Pleasing Patricia is most concerned with her employees liking her, work hard to make sure she knows you're on her side. Stop by to chat occasionally, ask about life outside of work, and generally try to be as nice as possible to help provide Pleasing Patricia with the support she needs.
3. Micromanaging Mitchell
Possibly one of the most difficult manager types to deal with, Micromanaging Mitchell is a handful. Whether he's hovering over you to make sure you're doing things his way or leaving out key information so you can't finish a project without getting him involved, he always finds ways to stay in the loop.
What psychologist David Keirsey called a "Guardian" type, Micromanaging Mitchell likes things in order and doesn't mind letting his employees know about it. He cares about deadlines and wants to be a part of every aspect of a project, so he constantly asks for updates and rarely delegates full responsibility to his employees.
How to deal with Micromanaging Mitchell: You can try to fight it, but the first thing you have to accept when your manager is Micromanaging Mitchell is that things are going to take you longer to finish, and they're going to include multiple interactions with your manager.
Instead of waiting for Mitchell to request your latest status update, be proactive. Adjust your workflow to include regular status updates (how often depends on the manager) and longer project meetings where you get as much information from your manager as possible. This will help you build your manager's trust and keep you from walking out of a meeting without the information you need to finish the job.
While this strategy may slow down your productivity, proactively keeping Micromanaging Mitchell in the loop ensures status report distractions come on your terms, not on his.
Dealing with a difficult manager is something we'll all have to at some point in our careers, but it doesn't have to keep us from being happy at work. Consider how your manager's personality drives his or her managerial style and find ways to build a productive working relationship by appealing to that personality.
Have you ever had one of these managers? How did you deal with him or her?
Molly Owens is the CEO of Truity, developer of the TypeFinder® personality type assessment and other scientifically validated, user-friendly personality assessments that connect people with powerful insights about their strengths, talents, and traits. Find Molly and Truity on Twitter and Facebook.
After all, a recent Gallup survey of 7,272 U.S. adults found one in two have left a job to get away from a bad manager and improve their overall life. That means building a working relationship with your manager is more important than ever.
When dealing with a difficult boss, understanding personality is key to identifying the best course of action to take. Here are three difficult managerial types you may encounter and what you need to know about dealing with them, so you'll never have to quit to get away from a difficult manager again:
1. Goal-Focused Gary
Goal-Focused Gary cares about only one thing: the goal he sets for himself. The problem is, he usually doesn't share that goal with his team, and that makes him difficult to deal with.
Since Gary thinks he's the most valuable employee in the company, he tends to ignore ideas he didn't come up with and rarely -- if ever -- will give you the recognition you deserve for a job well done.
Managers like Goal-Focused Gary like to be involved in every decision made in their group, so they get the credit for the team's success. In other words, you're probably going to be running all of your decisions by Gary first, no matter how experienced you are.
How to deal with Goal-Focused Gary: The trick to getting along with managers like Gary is understanding what drives them. According to Isabel Briggs Myers' theories of personality type, Goal-Focused Gary is a Thinking type, who is more focused on the task at hand than any relationships he could be building (or destroying).
Use this to your advantage. Find out what Goal-Focused Gary is trying to achieve and make sure what you do at work helps him achieve that goal. By doing so, you're showing Gary you're also interested in his success. When you show Gary you're interested in his success, your responsibilities will increase and you may end up climbing the corporate ladder with him.
2. Pleasing Patricia
Pleasing Patricia is agreeable. For her, management is all about being liked. Sounds great, right?
It is -- until you realize she's doing it because she doesn't like confrontation. When a manager is highly agreeable, it's actually pretty difficult to get things done.
Agreeableness is the "Big Five" personality trait that measures an individual's tendency toward empathy, affection, kindness, and its namesake, agreeableness. The problem is, Pleasing Patricia has it in spades. She's not just empathetic and affectionate, she's also afraid to hurt an employee's feelings or say no.
Since she's worried about hurting her employees' feelings, Pleasing Patricia will rarely give honest, constructive feedback, and she'll always avoid making decisions between competing ideas in a group setting. This lack of managerial instinct slows down productivity for the group and hurts your professional development.
How to deal with Pleasing Patricia: Your approach with a Pleasing Patricia needs to be two-pronged.
First, you've got to make an effort to assure Pleasing Patricia that, at least with you, honesty is the best policy. Explain how your goal is to be the best employee you can and how constructive feedback plays into achieving that goal. Balance your need for feedback with Pleasing Patricia's agreeable nature by encouraging her to always include one or two things you could do better when she gives you positive feedback.
Second, since Pleasing Patricia is most concerned with her employees liking her, work hard to make sure she knows you're on her side. Stop by to chat occasionally, ask about life outside of work, and generally try to be as nice as possible to help provide Pleasing Patricia with the support she needs.
3. Micromanaging Mitchell
Possibly one of the most difficult manager types to deal with, Micromanaging Mitchell is a handful. Whether he's hovering over you to make sure you're doing things his way or leaving out key information so you can't finish a project without getting him involved, he always finds ways to stay in the loop.
What psychologist David Keirsey called a "Guardian" type, Micromanaging Mitchell likes things in order and doesn't mind letting his employees know about it. He cares about deadlines and wants to be a part of every aspect of a project, so he constantly asks for updates and rarely delegates full responsibility to his employees.
How to deal with Micromanaging Mitchell: You can try to fight it, but the first thing you have to accept when your manager is Micromanaging Mitchell is that things are going to take you longer to finish, and they're going to include multiple interactions with your manager.
Instead of waiting for Mitchell to request your latest status update, be proactive. Adjust your workflow to include regular status updates (how often depends on the manager) and longer project meetings where you get as much information from your manager as possible. This will help you build your manager's trust and keep you from walking out of a meeting without the information you need to finish the job.
While this strategy may slow down your productivity, proactively keeping Micromanaging Mitchell in the loop ensures status report distractions come on your terms, not on his.
Dealing with a difficult manager is something we'll all have to at some point in our careers, but it doesn't have to keep us from being happy at work. Consider how your manager's personality drives his or her managerial style and find ways to build a productive working relationship by appealing to that personality.
Have you ever had one of these managers? How did you deal with him or her?
Molly Owens is the CEO of Truity, developer of the TypeFinder® personality type assessment and other scientifically validated, user-friendly personality assessments that connect people with powerful insights about their strengths, talents, and traits. Find Molly and Truity on Twitter and Facebook.
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