I got a new boss and my previously near-perfect job has changed significantly (in a bad way). Should I quit?

February 9, 2009 1:22 PM

I've been at my tiny non-profit for over three years. Last summer I got a new boss who's changed the workplace from a fairly egalitarian, self-managed environment to an autocratic, micro-managed one. For instance, I used to have a modicum of creative control over the media and newsletter I produced and now I have none. Folks keep saying I should talk to her but she's very dominant and she informed me the first week she came on the job that she's a micro-manager. I'm not paid well enough to stay if I'm not enjoying myself, but I am highly invested in the people we serve and keep imagining that maybe I'll adjust and she'll chill and we'll be able to go back to "the way it was". Am I hoping against hope? Anyone been to the other side?
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (16 answers total)

Folks keep saying I should talk to her but she's very dominant and she informed me the first week she came on the job that she's a micro-manager.

So, just to clarify: you haven't talked to her?
posted by billysumday at 1:27 PM on February 9, 2009

she informed me the first week she came on the job that she's a micro-manager.

Inform her right back that that's not acceptable, and if it continues you'll quit.

And be ready to follow through.

Am I hoping against hope?

If you're hoping that it'll just magically resolve itself without you talking to her about it, then yeah, that's not going to happen.
posted by ook at 1:37 PM on February 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

In my experience, micro-managers have a very difficult time even seeing that there is an issue with their management style, never mind changing their ways. Follow ook's advice but I would put out your resumes first.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:50 PM on February 9, 2009

disclosure: I have worked for several micro-managers and other various flavours of office-sociopaths over the years, so I will likely present a biased viewpoint.

Without knowing more about your scenario, I would guess that there is a desire for quality control or better corporate branding or something coming from management, and she has been brought on as the person to bring said quality to the media and newsletter. She's now inserting herself in files previously under your control.

Micro-managers rarely relinquish power, and they perceive "creative control" as power. To your boss, allowing you any say in files over which you previously had control is not going to be happening. You're perceiving this as a lack of trust in your abilities, but you need to keep in mind that for most micro-managers, it boils down to a lack of trust in themselves, a fear of responsibility that keeps making them go back and check the little details over and over again. You'll probably notice she has a hard time making decisions.

However, what to do about this? I think you should talk to her, if you haven't already - this is an important step in your paper trail of trying to address this problem. Needless to say, you should make a note of the conversation and its outcome. You can step up to the plate as a professional, and ask her for specifics on how the newsletter and media are to be improved. Ask for a chance to make the changes, then do it to the best of your ability, with as much attention to detail as possible. Keep your boss in the loop at all times. Your goal here is to make her as comfortable with the files and your work as possible, so that she won't ride herd on you as much as she might otherwise.

Ask for lots and lots of feedback. Institute a weekly meeting if you don't already do that. Keep her as up to date as you can. Overload her with information, ideas, new contacts, new leads, whatever. As time goes along, the hope is that you will build a working rapport with her. If she's an otherwise sane individual, building that working rapport with her will allow her to begin trusting you more and more, and start giving back some of the control she has now taken.

Worst case scenario, she never trusts you and never relinquishes any control at all. If that happens, start working your contacts, networking, learning as much as you can about other files and activities at your NGO. Look for opportunities to expand your expertise. Then find another job.

Good luck, and mefimail me if you need a shoulder to lean on!
posted by LN at 1:53 PM on February 9, 2009 [9 favorites]

I'm in a very similar situation - sort of the opposite, though, my new-ish boss is so far away from being a micro manager that she in fact does pretty much nothing - and after a year and a half of this, I'm sending resumes out. If I were you, I'd start looking. Given this economy, it may take a long time, so in the meantime do the best you can and figure on leaving ASAP. My experience has been that bosses, akin to the leopard who does not change his spots, do not change their management style. Life is short; jobs are many.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:53 PM on February 9, 2009

Similar situation. There was a leadership vacuum, so it was possible to make a big difference
without being the president. Then we got strong leadership that couldn't think of anything
to do except to take over roles that were already being done by other board members.
Nothing was any good unless the new president had planned and executed it.

I stayed for a couple of years because I was there, unpaid, to serve my community, but I
got more and more dissatisfied with having to clean up after the president on jobs that I
had been doing without a hitch for years. It was only after I had been gone for a
few months that I realized how much it had been eating me. The problem with nonprofits is
that the working arrangements can be much more personal than just a job. In terms of
your own emotional well-being, your heart might be more involved than it should be.

I think you're hoping against hope that a autocratic micromanager can be anything
else but that. Even if you become more and more aggressive to counterbalance the
micromanagement, you might still fail, as the boss/employee relationship can be used to
punish you. Get another job, get away cleanly without rancor, and don't look back.
posted by the Real Dan at 2:04 PM on February 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Saying "I'm a micro-manager" is like saying "I'm an asshole." It's the asshole's way of making it your problem by telling themselves that, yes, they're an asshole, but they're honest about it. In their sociopathic little minds, that somehow makes it okay.

And in a way, it does. You know she's a micro-manager, and you continue to work there, so you've implicitly given permission to be micro-managed. You were given your opportunity to bail, and you didn't, and someone who's a defiant micro-manager is especially unlikely to change.
posted by fatbird at 2:43 PM on February 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'm not paid well enough to stay if I'm not enjoying myself, but I am highly invested in the people we serve and keep imagining that maybe I'll adjust and she'll chill and we'll be able to go back to "the way it was".

No. Too many staff in nonprofits burn themselves out out of some sense of duty to the mission. If you really care about the mission and the people, you're not doing them any favors by staying in a job where you're unhappy and unfulfilled. Take your talents somewhere else where the working conditions suit you better. It's not likely your boss will undergo a profound personality change, and even if she does (it happens) it's probably going to take a longer time than you want to wait. Value yourself. A boss capable of working with your talents and promoting your abilities is worth finding. This isn't her.
posted by Miko at 3:08 PM on February 9, 2009

If you are thinking of leaving, you have to consider your options.

If you have ample savings and ample options, you have good freedom to lay down the rules and make ultimatums also until things change or they fire you.

On the other hand, if you need the job, you need to quietly find another one and try to make peace by asking for her suggestion about something in the meantime.

Another note, I've never been good at allowing people to think they came up with an idea that was actually mine but some people seem to swear by it.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 3:34 PM on February 9, 2009

In this comment, I'll brainstorm different ways you might work with or talk to your manager. Unfortunately, I don't know what you've tried already. Feel free to Mefi me if you want (I don't supervise any newsletter writers :) ).

One way I've found of working with a micromanager is to only bring to them things I want help with (ie, that you want micromanaged). Otherwise, act like things are totally under control, and just summarize what was done. Do not expect that they'll ever just say "ok, looks good" unless you act confident that something is officially finished. Also, try to get as much of their feedback up front as possible:
- what stories do you want in the newsletter?
- great. which do you want to outline or write yourself?
- great, thanks. i'll write the others, and could you get me yours in two days?
*a week passes*
- I filled in your outlines and dropped in the stories you wrote and one that suzanne wrote. Then I sent the content over to the graphic designer. We'll get the draft on thursday. I'll send you the draft. Let me know if you see any major changes needed, but I think it looks great. Also, any changes beyond spelling or punctuation cost us a change fee. now, about the op-ed. do you want to draft it or should i?...

The beauty of this method, too, is that if you get all their feedback up front, then run with it, and then she changes something, then you have a problem you can discuss. "We've had to pay a change fee the past three months. How can we avoid this while still keeping the process moving quickly?" or (if you have to do it yourself) "I'm glad you have so much energy for the newsletter, but in the past we never made major revisions to the text this close to publication. It's not really efficient and can introduce new typos. How can we change the process so that we're not making changes this late in the game?"

Another useful phrase is "I want to free some of your time up so you can [do this much more important thing]. Maybe Don could do the proofreading this month?"

Being more direct with her might sound something like this: "It's great to have a boss who thinks the newsletter is as important as I think it is. One issue that's come up, is that with you willing to do all the writing, I've found myself with extra time, so I'm looking for some additional tasks to take on. I'm working here because I enjoy using my creativity to communicate with [our population]. I'm wondering if we could add some responsibilities to my plate that would help me grow in my job and also contribute to the mission."
posted by salvia at 3:34 PM on February 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

Saying "I'm a micro-manager" is like saying "I'm an asshole."

No it isn't. There are plenty of good reasons to micro-manage, and when those reasons change, some micro-managers change. Sometimes a "fairly egalitarian, self-managed environment" is an environment where things are done sloppily and incorrectly, where an overarching coordination of services and products is lacking, and where people who do not have appropriate experience or knowledge are making decisions about policy that should not be left to them. I mention all of this because I not only work for a micro-manager, I have had to become one in a job that I started six months ago. The level of incompetence at my government job is staggering, and because people have been left to work as they saw fit for too long, everything must now (at least for now) be micromanaged.

You don't really say a lot about your interactions with this woman, or about your level in the company or your responsibilities. She may be as ghastly as you intimate, but she may also be working to correct mistakes that you cannot see or don't want to acknowledge. I would certainly suggest that you speak with her, that you ask her to help clarify what she expects from your work so that you can attempt to provide it. The thing is, since the other option here is that you would leave, you have nothing at all to lose from sitting down with the woman. You may be god's gifts to non-profits, but I feel pretty confident that god's gift knows how to have a grown-up conversation with their manager even if that manager is a bit intimidating.
posted by OmieWise at 3:50 PM on February 9, 2009 [2 favorites]

While I don't agree with OmnieWise's harsh tone, I do agree that using this as an opportunity to learn how to have a direct conversation with your boss about a sensitive topic would probably be a useful long-term investment in your career and personal life. There are a lot of great books about this: Crucial Conversations is my favorite, and also good are Fierce Conversations and Difficult Conversations. What follows is just my own opinion, but those books are much better, so read them.

There are two ways to handle this, the frank way ("this is what I want out of a job, and if that isn't going to be possible here, we should start figuring out a transition plan for me to leave") and the advocacy way (described more below, where you present an organizational problem and a proposed solution, and it just so happens that your solution is exactly what you need to be happy). I'd go with the advocacy approach, at least initially. This conversation doesn't need to be personal or emotional. Here's how I'd construct what I'd say to her.

Brainstorm these things... (1) What goals do you share with her (a successful organization; high quality printed material; manageable workloads for both of you; to have a satisfied, productive, motivated communications employee in your position) (2) What do you want? (an opportunity to express creativity, a certain area of responsibility that you are entrusted to carry out. but would you be satisfied if your creativity was expressed through the website instead of the newsletter? get clear about what you'd be willing to accept.) (3) What's not working now? (her reviews mean that the process is more cumbersome than necessary, last week she made some changes that introduced inaccuracies and you had to run the stories back by all the program staff, you have a lot of free time now and need to find a way to productively fill it, it seems like there's redundancy in what you're doing and what she's doing so staff resources aren't being used efficiently) -- I have found that whatever problem you choose to focus on tends to take on a life of its own and drive the conversation and shape the ultimate solutions, so I'd choose carefully.

Then mix and match until you find a problem that impacts your shared goals and has a solution that meets your personal needs. For example, "I had a few ideas about how to make the newsletter production process more efficient. Right now, [the process is X], which means that it takes three weeks to write and edit the newsletter and that the process takes up a lot of your time. What if we did Y? Would that work? By my estimates, that would produce the same high-quality result in about half the time." (Note that, "how to speed things up" is now the focus, so maybe her suggestion will be "send everyone on staff to grammar camp" or something.) Before you talk to her, remind yourself that you're working toward shared goals. Good luck.
posted by salvia at 4:16 PM on February 9, 2009

I worked for someone who many (including me) considered to be a micro-manager. For the first year or two it was hard, but as we worked together -- and he learned to trust me -- I became very autonomous, and ended up really, really appreciating my boss. By the end, he frequently deferred to my judgment, and often asked me to only let him know what I was up to if there was a problem.

If the micro-managing adds value to your work, you should perhaps consider it an opportunity to learn. Being under someone's wing can be an excellent learning experience. However, if you aren't learning, and feel like you're being held back, then it's time to take action.

If you don't need the money, threaten to quit and be ready to back it up. If you do need the money, line up a new job offer first before setting your ultimatum.
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:38 PM on February 9, 2009

IN light of the excellent subsequent matters, I'm reconsidering - it could be that what feels to you like micromanagement is important grooming and needed structure. So I now rescind my kneejerk advice and encourage you to take the conversational approach, as well, to try to find a communication and work style that satisfies both your goals.

I'm very sensitive to the fact that bad management situations are regrettably frequent in nonprofits. It's hard to tell from your question whether that's what you're experiencing, or whether your manager is indeed quite good and focused on making needed improvements, regardless of whether that means putting the staff outside the 'egalitarian' comfort zone. Either thing could be the case, and we wouldn't be able to diagnose this from the question. So forget my "run now" response and begin a constructive strategy of finding accord. Only if that's not profitable would it make sense to shine up the resume.
posted by Miko at 9:14 PM on February 9, 2009

....Especially in this lousy climate.
posted by Miko at 9:15 PM on February 9, 2009

I'd just like to clarify that my harsh tone is mostly (mostly) directed at all those who stepped in to say micromanagers suck. I agree that they sometimes very often do, but I also think that without more information, it's impossible to know whether we should pillory this woman or not. It does give me pause that the frequent advice of colleagues, to talk with her, has so far been rejected as too onerous. I hate to have difficult conversations but I would certainly rather have one than start looking for another job without fully exploring the terrain.
posted by OmieWise at 4:39 AM on February 10, 2009