Embrace Your Microbes

Ok…I will put on my best behavior when I go back to the office on 4/1. I will treat Alice to the niceness :)

Dealing With An Incompetent Boss.

An incompetent person is someone who is functionally inadequate or insufficient in knowledge, skills, judgment or strength. If this is what you’re talking about than you’re right, they are incompetent. It happens. In other words, the boss doesn’t know squat about being a manager and probably knows little to nothing about the area of work you do.

An incompetent boss can seriously damage or derail your career. If they do have a serious lack of knowledge, we know that they can do nothing to grow you as an employee. Let’s look at the potential damage they can inflict and what you can do to minimize or avoid.

Career Impact – the decisions they make can have an impact on you. They lack insight and understanding. This means the impact to you can range from cleaning up a mess to putting you in a position that makes you look like you tanked the business. It can make you lose precious time and focus or even get fired.

Bad Direction – we look for our boss to provide direction. But when the boss is incompetent, their directions can be bad or pointless, often leaving important issues untouched.

Bad Support – our boss can be the single biggest supporter of our career trajectory but if they are clueless about the nature of your work, they may be supporting either the wrong things or person. When you have an incompetent boss, you do have to think through how this person functions in order to use whatever strength they do have to your advantage or minimally avoid career limiting outcomes.

Things You Can Do To Prevail With An Incompetent Boss:

Up Level Yourself >> if you know your area well enough, there is no reason to not go ahead and create and pursue directions you know will achieve results good for your company. People that do this are naturally followed by their peers as an informal leader. Management, although maybe not your direct boss will notice your initiative. Of course, you don’t want to do something that undermines the boss, so keep them in the loop.

Figure Out The Problem >> the boss’s incompetence is annoying, but it usually impacts you and others in specific ways. Try to observe what those are and make a plan to counteract the problem. I once had an incompetent boss; the biggest issue was that he would sometimes make decisions for the group I managed that were ill considered and negatively impacted the company. I asked him if I could be involved in those decision discussions and it mostly worked. There were times when the direction simply wasn’t possible, but people soon learned that they needed to come to me for good decisions. We worked around the problem.

Teach Them >> every time you speak to your boss you have an opportunity to train and teach them about your area. It seems kind of ludicrous to train your boss, but the ongoing investment will be worth it once they are savvy enough to know what you’re talking about.

Look For A Mentor >> look around for someone at a higher level who is sharp and going places with some type of a good connection to you. Ask them to be your mentor.

Leave >> sometimes it’s better for your career to leave rather than try to stick it out. If you’ve tried several things and there is no improvement, it may be the time for you to pursue something else. While an incompetent boss can be annoying and frustrating, you can make up for their short comings and also manage up as they know innately that they lack many skills and knowledge. Don’t let your frustration get in the way of managing the situation more effectively.

I know that The Witch is trying…I can see that she is cutting down communication time with me…to minimize confusion…or if I want to view at it negatively…is to ensure that I do not have the sufficient information to carry out my tasks. Nonetheless, its nature vs. nurture here. It’s already inside her. Miguel’s training will take some time to digest in. Furthermore, The Witch is quite stubborn, refuse to lose and she subconsciously lives in her own world where she mis-interprets things often.