The owner wants everyone back in the office at least a couple of times a week. This is a small business with only two managers: Jane and me. One of us needs to be in the office every day. This is fine. We worked out a schedule. The problem is, Jane and I have very different management styles. Instead of managing our own people, we are now managing everyone half the time. I feel like I can’t overrule Jane’s bad decisions, but I also feel like I can’t let them stand. How do I work this out?
To read my answer, click over to Comstock’s: How Can I Share Managing Duties With a Manager Who’s Totally Different?
Good advice. I was going to say, “pick your battles,” but your recommendations are so much better.
Respect at work is a complex psychological dynamic that can be as difficult to maneuver as any of the dynamics in a personal relationship outside of work. It starts with an understanding of how people make decisions, and moves onto acknowledging that there is a huge difference between decisions about behavior preferences and differences about content – the ‘stuff of what we are working on’ together.
Constructive confrontation – pushing back in a way that acknowledges such differences in an effective way takes a level of skill that goes beyond the everyday. When coaching my direct reports, I always came suggested that people people recognize that.
If you share objectives, you can work out differences in approach and even make they work for the two of you since conflict around content can lead to creative construction and innovation. If you don’t share objectives, you may need to negotiate boundaries around what decision making you will share, and what you will do separately.
But it all starts with an acceptance of the fact that self awareness into your own behavior patterns and insight into how it is the same and different from those of the people you work with are the beginning of interpersonal effectiveness. It may sound paradoxical, but with respect, self awareness, and insight into others, you may find yourself annoyed and frustrated by a peer, rather than being able to work in a way that allows effective creative confrontation about different ways of doing things.
Roelf
The presentation of the “shared” office setup was vague in the article but it was clarified in the answer given. Neither manager needs to direct the other “team” priority unless they both were assigned the same exact job by the owner that has the same end point of expected results. So on the days when the staff is not in office, supervision would be done remotely for the progress and when in office the supervision would be in person for their team. I highly doubt that only one team would be showing up on any given day, especially if both managers are present all 5 days of the office hours.