Page 98 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Entering Your Boss’s World 83

ning to unwind. Your boss may be more relaxed and in a frame of mind to lis-
ten and think with you. It is critical that you get your boss’s dedicated time.
Many a transition has gone sour because, in the absence of regular com-
munication, the new manager thought he had a mandate, thought he was
doing what he had been hired to do, and thought his boss was pleased with
what was happening.
Nancy is an independent, self-reliant person. She was a field representa-
tive for the home office, a job that afforded her a great deal of personal inde-
pendence and authority. She liked making her own decisions, doing things her
own way. When she represented the company in the field, she was generally
the final authority. Even though her independence could make her difficult to
work with, she was quite effective. The field force generally felt that she made
things better for them.
However, Nancy’s effectiveness in-house was tempered by her difficulty
in being a team player. She felt that she was competent and should be allowed
to do her job as she felt best, and she resented her boss’s oversight. Accord-
ingly, she often made decisions without checking them out; she distributed
reports, directions, and analyses that her boss had not reviewed. She made
commitments her boss had not approved; and at one point she used her boss’s
initials on a proposal that they had discussed in concept but that he had
not approved. Her boss saw the reports after they had already been sent out
and bound.
At heart, Nancy may have felt that she was more competent than her boss.
Certainly her expressed need was “Hire me to do the job and I’ll do it,” which
was a style different from her boss’s. He had worked hard to develop the prod-
uct line and the clients, and he was very fastidious about what was done with
clients. He expected to review materials before they were sent to clients, and
he expected to be told of client decisions before the fact. In defending her need
for authority, Nancy avoided interactions with her boss because she felt they
might lead to control, but her short-term strategy would defeat her in the long
run. The promotion to department head went to someone who was less expe-
rienced and younger but was someone the boss felt would work better with
the clients and keep him better informed.
Nancy did not adequately discern the limits of her authority. She did not
appreciate that her boss felt proprietary about the work in the department and
that Nancy’s decisions and performance directly affected her boss—the amount