Month: January 2012

The burned-out geek leader

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I’ve been thinking recently about different types of leaders.  Or at least of different of types of behaviors that leaders might exhibit.  If I keep thinking about it, this may well turn into a series.  If I stop thinking about it, however, I reserve the right to change topics.

2007 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Burnout.
Image via Wikipedia

The first one that I thought I’d tackle is the burned-out geek leader.  Some signs your geek leader is burned out include…

  • She can’t remember much.
  • She seems to not pay attention to what’s going on unless it’s right in front of her face – she’s detached and unfocused.
  • She’s behind in email (well, more behind than usual).
  • She becomes obsessed with something that seems relatively insignificant – she has a very one-track mind (seems like a control issue).

I think that pretty much every leadership state has its pros and cons (even this one).

Pros:

  • If your manager is burned out, you get to pretty much just do your job.  Unless you’re working on that one thing with which she’s obsessed, she’ll just leave you alone.
  • You have a chance to shine by keeping things running while she doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to deal with them.

Cons:

  • Getting a substantive answer about anything is pretty much next to impossible.
  • If you try to keep things running and fail, you have a very good chance of being thrown under the bus.
  • Finding her is tough; she could be crazy in meetings or off hiding.
  • You have to continuously hound her in order to get anything done (e.g., my vacation begins tomorrow, can you please approve it now?).
  • There’s some chance that she’ll give you short-sighted or distracted answers (“Just do this and leave me alone.”) for which you’ll pay later, either personally or professionally.

I thought I’d give an example of this last point from my life.  As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I once went through two water disasters in five days (waterfalls in the server room).  We – that is, my team, my boss, and I – were all operating in a state of extreme burn-out.  During a conversation about the damage, my boss told me to get a second replacement Storage Area Network (SAN), and when I questioned the order (saying that I wasn’t sure that insurance would cover it), he snapped at me and told me to just get it.  Fast forward a few months, and it turns out that the insurance company would pay for the first SAN, but not the second.

So what do you do with a burned-out boss? (Full disclosure: this is how I like my team to deal with me when I’m burned out).

  • Keep things running.  She will adore you for that.
  • Do your best to get answers, but make sure you need the answers before hounding her.  Don’t hound her for an answer that could have waited, and don’t waste her attention.
  • If you have a good relationship with her, encourage her to take some time away.  Maybe it seems like working all weekend will make the next week easier, but chances are that working all weekend will only exacerbate the burn-out and make the next week even worse.  Working without a break massively decreases efficiency, especially for folks who are burned out.

What other behaviors characterize a burned out leader?  What are other coping methods that work?

Why does my staff hate me?

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English: A housecat named Princess who highly ...
Image via Wikipedia

If you’ve ever managed people and (like me) are somewhat empathic, you’ve had this experience: you walk into the office, and you can feel the waves of disgruntlement radiating from your staff. You’re not sure why or what happened, but they’re grumpy.  If it were just one or two of them, you could easily brush it off.  But instead it seems that the cranky fairy visited your department and liberally sprinkled his gift around.

So you pull someone (in my case, usually one of my managers or senior folks) into your office and ask.  Maybe said someone just glowers and says “nothing,” or maybe the conversation goes something like this:

Me: So what’s up around here?

Someone: I don’t think people are happy.

Me: Do you know why?

Someone: They’re not happy about <something you probably did, said, or asked them to do>.

The first time I had one of these conversations, I was honestly bewildered.  I had no idea why it seemed like my staff suddenly hated me.  Sure, there were some times that I did things to which a grumpy response was inevitable, but what I’m talking about here was boss-hating out of left field.  I’ve developed some theories as to why this happens:

  • You (the boss) represent the establishment. If your firm or company is doing something that they don’t particularly like, you are sometimes perceived as the immediate representative of The Man.  I find this is more common with new direct reports or folks who don’t know you well enough to know your motivations yet.
  • The “heart” of your department feels hurt. This doesn’t happen with every team, but there are often one or two employees who are the “heart” of the team (think Kaylee Frye on Firefly).  However this person feels is how the rest of the team will feel. And something happened to make this person unhappy.
  • You did something wrong. Or at least you did something that made them grumpy and you didn’t realize it at the time you did it.

So how do you deal with these situations?

  • It’s tough to be part of “the establishment,” but you can’t get away from that to some extent, since you are your team’s main point of contact for the Powers That Be.  If you realize this is going on, reassure your team that you’ll fight for their best interests, and work on building relationships with them so that they realize that you’re not The Man.
  • It’s pretty easy to deal with your team’s “heart” if you get along well with him or her.  You can take him out for a cup of coffee, find out what’s going on, and address the issue.  If you don’t get along with him, however (and I’ve had both situations when I’ve been a manager), you’ll have to slog through more emotional muck before you can get down to addressing the issue.   It won’t be quick or easy, though, and you might have to just wait for the current situation to blow over before working on building your relationship with him.  I’ll bet you didn’t realize that you’d become part shrink when you became a manager, eh?
  • I have a very simple formula that I follow when I’ve done something wrong or sub-optimal: own up to it, apologize for it, and take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  Trying to shift blame or defend your actions to your already pissed-off team will only exacerbate the crankiness and undermine their trust for you.  Find out what you did wrong, take responsibility, apologize, and fix it.

I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface here; what situations have I missed?  How do you handle it when your team seems to suddenly hate you?