Control Freak or just Clueless?

How new is he?

Does he have an assistant?

Does he delegate or micromanage?

Can a team meeting be held and do a "stop start continue"?

When he was hired for the job, was it a group interview, or is the management style one where you're left out completely?

Who is his boss?

hmmmm

I think the worst thing is not having team meetings, since it seems the big problem is communication.

One thing at a time.

It doesn't have to be anything elaborate. More like a homeroom meeting.....Just 5 minutes every morning, or every other, while getting a cup of coffee. Can be in a break room, or someone elses office, just someplace to gather.
That's the time for anyone to bring up projects in the works, upcoming meetings, interesting information learned.

In addition, everyone could email calander items to each other, so you're all in the loop.

Finally, you really need some type of monthly meeting to really go over everything happening. If it's a small group, maybe over a group business lunch. Everyone likes lunch.

I worked for someone like this for 10 years. She could be so chaotic that I sometimes think she was terrified by the idea of order.

Good luck...

Management through chaos.

So, you asked for input on how to deal with the situation.

Do any of my suggestions sound viable? If not, why do you think that?

Seems to me the problem is communication, I don't see any other way of solving it other than getting people together to do so.

Communications, as Chai pointed out, do seem to be a problem, but unfortunately that's more often the case than not.

It seems to me that the supervisor's management skills may need some improvement. That's hard to do from below. Often managers get their positions because they have strong technical skills with little regard to their ability to manage people. Sometimes that can workout alright. If the workunit's mission requires individual initiative, creativity, innovative thinking, and ability to work well together in problem solving situations, then something more is needed. We all tend to do those things we like to do, or do best. We avoid situations where we aren't confident of being "good".

So, does this seem to describe your supervisor? Good at what he does, but just doesn't seem to know how to manage people? If so, the supervisor is probably going to be sensitive about criticism, especially from subordinates. Its an ego thing.

How well does the workunit meet its mission? Are objectives fully met on time and within budget? What is the quality of the work product on a scale of -10 to +10? What sort of people make up the workunit, and how large is it? How would you typify workunit moral? Nature abhors a vacuum, so who is the "real" leader of the work unit? Ask why is it that the current situation exists? The answers to these sort of questions may provide some hints as to what might be done to improve the structure.

Here is a general observation, or two, for what its worth. Every member of a group will have some weakness, so someone else must be strong to compensate. Disorganization and dissonance reduce unit effectiveness and efficiency, so the unit must always be working toward harmony and organization. Both organization and harmony can be achieved without regard to the official chain-of-command ... if there is a leader whose vision is large. The informal and formal leaders of a unit working together can greatly increase the unit's ability to exceed mission requirements.

Asherman nailed it.

My efforts to provide any sort of managment of the group have met with resistance, since I'm not the manager. But this guy acts just as the A-man says, and is very sensitive to criticism. Most of us are wandering, and quite lost at work, because of his lack of people management skills.

As far as that meeting goes, like most places we have Microsoft Office running Outlook and Exchange servers, so it isn't very difficult to book a meeting and schedule a room in advance. This is his typical modus operandi - showing up five to ten minutes before he needs something and announcing its importance.

I would quit if I didn't need the job and didn't owe them $20K for relocation.

Believe me, I feel your pain.

He's the boss, and inside he knows he doesn't have a handle on it, but has no idea why. So, he's defensive.

There's no way of bring up ideas in such a way that he thinks it's his idea?

What has he actually said to you about brief homeroom meetings?

If you haven't brought it up, sorry but you haven't even tried.
Volunteer to be the coordinator of these meetings. You have Outlook, but does he use it? Apparantly not.

What if you emailed him in the middle of the afternoon every day, requesting information on what meetings he wants you at tomorrow?

He's got to develope some habits. Asking him well before hand to think about the future may help getting him into that habit.

He sounds like he sucks as a manager. Perhaps meeting with the one above him? After you make the effort to solve the problem with this guy, if nothing happens, go up the ladder.

All is not necessarily hopeless. Give us more information so we can consider alternative mitagation measures. The more I know of the specifics, the better chance I'll have of suggesting possible tactics. Please start by addressing the questions I posed above.

In the meantime, stabilize the situation. Don't challenge the supervisor, or try to overtly make changes in the overall structures. If he has ego issues, try to satisfy them without losing your dignity. Within your position definitions, maximize your organization. By this I mean, be able to handle all aspects with miniumum active thought and special preparation. This should allow you to get enough ahead of the curve, that last moment "critical" mission assignments don't interfere with the normal workload. At this time concentrate your effort inside your own sphere, while building informal ties with co-workers. Keep in very informal, and defer to senior members of the team. Build harmony. Perform random acts of kindness and offer support to others who are struggling, but keep it very low-key.

Write me as full a report as you can, and then give me some time to digest the material. My general approach would be to research the situation from a discrete distance, brief my team, and then show up on site for a full organizational audit. We would observe, measure and conduct very informal interviews with the workunit and with other workunits that deal with the subject organization. From that material, my team would develope problem descriptions with alternative means of improving the situtation. We would discuss the various observations and ideas before working up a team report ... probably over my signature. I would then make my report to the convening authority with recommendations. Sometimes that would be the end of our involvement, but in other situations I and my team might go in and set up shop for a period to supervise changes. Now I'm retired and don't have a team of bright young people to gather and process data into useful information. I'm not going to be visiting the site to personally observe what's going on. The bottom-line is, that if you would like my views, you need to get information to me in as objective a manner as possible. Our measures will have to be done informally because I haven't any clout to "force" change. These conditions makes it much harder to effect drastic change in short time periods.

Ash

You must be assertive. Tell the guy to shove the 9:00 meeting up his ass. Tell him what a freaking loser he is. Tell him that he is a waste to society. That should shut him up!

On second thought - NAH!

Let me caution you against any direct, or even indirect challenge to the supervisor at this time. Any attempt to go over his head, or around his authority will probably end badly for you and the workunit as a group.

You are, I'm assuming, still a junior member of the organization and it would be very improper and inappropriate to act above your rank and grade. I say again... stabilize the situation for the present. Step back from the symptoms and try to understand exactly what the real problems are. If the workunit is meeting all its objectives on time and within budget it is a very different situation than if the workunit is not performing up to the larger organizational mission. The CEO, or someone up the chain of command is responsible deciding if your workunit really needs change or not. My guess is that your workunit is very inefficient, but at least marginally effective. Your supervisor is making a contribution to the larger organization that meets at least the minmum expectations. If this isn't so, then all you have to do is be patient because CEOs have very little patience themselves when organizational objectives are not being met. I suspect that what we are looking at here is primarily improving the efficiency and comfort levels of the workunit. That will have to be done informally, at least at first, and will take some time to accomplish. If you are successful in improving conditions within the workunit, its capability will probably increase and the supervisor will be given credit for the improvements.

Yeah, all that. I agree, but you say it much better than I ever could Ash. Thanks for the advice, I'll try to post a response back to your earlier post when I have the time.

Thanks again!

I'll be getting my first review (for what?) today or tomorrow. After I've digested whatever that brings to the table, I'll post back.

Very interesting. I meet with my supervisor for my review. He spends 15 minutes explaining the grading scale and apparently his concern that I might compare my result with others in the group. He doesn't bother to go over any of the objectives or feedback - not at all. Now, this is the first time I've seen the objectives. They were never made clear to me before this. He dismisses me and lets me review it on my own time, saying he's willing to discuss it more in the future.

Now, after this lesson in non-communication, guess what I get dinged on? My communication skills. This from a person who has hardly spoken with me for five months.

Alrighty then, I am in a similar bind with one member of management also.

I work directly for a supervisor/manager who I have a fantastic cohesive relationship with.

I then work directly with upper managers who are responsible for individual clients and I am a member of a team that co-ordinates the work that relates to that client.

Of all these managers, one is a problem. He will not include me in meetings regarding and with the client, despite the fact that I am the day-to-day client contact. In my opinion he is undermining my work, my value to the team, and causing confusion, letting things fall through the cracks and the clients are not happy.

I have explained to him, in detail, what my job is and how I can make his workload much lighter and his life easier, all while keeping him in the loop and involving him in everything I do for the client (I suspected he was a control freak and couldn't let himself hand it off to me). He verbally agrees with everything I say and apologizes profusely when he neglects to include me in conference calls, meetings, or in general updates with the team. I have asked him directly if there is a problem and if he would prefer to use someone else in my place on the teams but he is effusive in his praise and tells me I am fabulous and he would be horrified if I left the team. -----Lip-service-----. Two seconds later he goes right back to excluding me and then surprises me with huge urgent projects that simply have to be done by the end of the day - the client is waiting - and it's 5:25pm when he first tells me about it. I am banging my head off a brick wall here.

I went to my supervisor/manager and explained my frustrations. She went and spoke to him directly. He was a good boy for a few days, including me in everything, and then went right back to his old ways. He called me yesterday yelling and complaining that I had not done something, which he had never asked me to do in the first place. Apparently he had had a meeting with the client, promised them something, forgot to tell anyone else on the team about it, and then when the client called me, I had no idea what they were talking about (how professional!). I told them I would call them back, avoiding telling them I hadn't even started the project never mind knew anything about it, intending to ask this manager what was going on. The client had called him too and he calls me in a panic. Of course he's upset, beating himself for not telling me, apologizing, begging me to stay late to get it done (sigh!).

I am assertive, efficient, and a good worker. I would normally say that things like these are not an issue for me, that I can handle many difficult situations and people, but I am ready to kill this guy. I want to beat his ass so bad that I can't see straight. I literally have had to walk away from him at times because I thought I was going to hurt him. He is aware how this frustrates me because he ran after me (after a meeting I had not been invited to) calling "are you mad at me"? and I had to tell him I couldn't talk to him right at that moment, I needed time to calm down.

In everything else he is a good guy. He is smart, very good at his job, and I do truly like his personality. It is this one area, where he is so bad at communicating with the team (they all come and complain to me about him) that is just so frustrating to us all, and we are more than a little concerned that we will lose a client because of it. Individually we have each spoken to him, as a team we discussed it with him - all with him promising to get better. Fine for a short while and then same thing again. My supervisor then went to his direct-report and explained the situation to him and he talked to him. Again good for a week or so and then back to the old ways. He just doesn't get it. Or if he does, there is something in his personality that won't allow him to conform to the idea that he has to SHARE with his teams/co-workers. Maybe he is afraid that if he is not the one doing it all, then he will not get all the praise, and the clients will be unable to live without him? Unfortunately he cannot do it all. He has got to let the rest of us in so we can do our jobs. I am concerned that I am getting passive about the situation in that I admitted to someone the other day that "I don't care anymore". Surely that's not the attitude to have when I am supposed to be taking care of clients and working in their best interests?

Sorry for hi-jacking your thread cjhsa but I really needed to get all that off my chest. I sooo understand your frustrations!

No problem. I have a suspicion that what you describe is going to come to a head for me as the real meat of the project gets underway. Good luck.

Is there any way for the company to create email groups (there must be)? If you can create one (I can't in my company, because we have stupid Lotus Notes that everyone hates, but I digress), create one with everyone on the team, including yourself and your boss, with your boss's permission, of course. And ask your boss if he can ask this guy to use the email group from now on when communicating with the team. That way, both you and your boss are kept in the loop -- and it becomes painfully obvious when you aren't.

yeah, this is what I've been trying to say...but not in such fancy words as asherman, so I suppose they do not count for as much.

communicate, communicate, communicate....