In a recent article on BNET, The Real Reason for Bad Bosses, Jeffrey Pfeffer highlights a common, but little noted, paradox. To be a good manager, you need to be positive, supportive, and warm, but to be perceived as strong, competent, and intelligent, you need to be critical and even nasty.
The Two-Faced Manager
While there is a lot of truth to Pfeffer’s argument, he misses an important point. There is no law that says you have to be one or the other. There are two audiences at play – your team and the management team, including your peers and higher level managers – and you are the interface between them. You can and should present a different face to each audience.
When it comes to surviving in the corporate world, being two-faced is not only okay, it is absolutely necessary. You need to be the most supportive, collaborative manager possible in interactions with your subordinates, and you need to be as strong as possible (without being overbearing) in interactions with your peers and higher level managers. Not only does this improve your image (and promotability) with the management team, it also helps to ensure that your team gets its fair share of the goodies.
Strong Does Not Mean Nasty
The other common mis-perception (which Pfeffer clearly does not share) is that you need to be visibly “tough” or even nasty to be strong. While this kind of behavior may make you look strong in the short run (and even longer in a dysfunctional organization), it is ultimately a sign of weakness, not strength, and will eventually be seen as such.
This does not mean that you can’t be firm with your team, and critical when called for, and it doesn’t mean you need to turn into an SOB when you interact with managers. And, it especially doesn’t mean that you need to lie to either audience. Instead, you need to understand that there are two audiences, with different needs and expectations. To be a good manager for your team, your organization, and your career, you need to give each audience what it expects and needs.
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Good thoughts. And I absolutely agree that I don’t have to be an SOB to make it as a manager. (What a relief!)
While you’ll certainly interact differently with your subordinates than you will with your peers and with the higher-ups, I think the phrase “two-faced” overstates the case. At bottom you have to be true to your own personality. You might show some aspects of your personality to subordinates and other aspects to peers. But you’ll fail if you try to create a persona that isn’t reflective of who you really are. People will see through the artifice and lose respect for you. Not only that, you’ll have a harder time sleeping at night. And sleeping is already hard enough when you’re a manager.
Larry,
Thanks for the comments. The point I tried to make using the term “two-faced” was a bit over the top (though it did elicit your comment, so it served a purpose:-).
You make the point much better; it’s about showing some aspects of your personality to subordinates and others to peers.
Building a different, and false, persona is a bad idea for all the reasons you cite. If you actually have the acting chops to pull it off, you belong on Broadway:), otherwise, give it a pass.
Thanks again for your thoughts.