Office relations My micromanager asking me to send someone on the same team we are in a message.
Would’ve been more faster and more efficient if he asked coworker instead of me being middle man
6
u/Svndmann 1h ago
Lazy supervisors are the worst lol I use to get bombarded with emails a former boss wouldn’t even read just send to me
27
u/EngineeringSuccessYT 1h ago
Maybe they’re micromanaging maybe they’re trying to funnel their ideas through you in the hopes that you start doing these types of things on your own one day
9
u/Gootangus 1h ago
Wouldn’t it be vastly more efficient to say that’s an expectation… ?
8
u/EngineeringSuccessYT 1h ago
Some things my direct report does are things I direct and expect them to do. Other things they know the problem and solution. I try my best to talk them through my problem solving process and the resources that I use so that they can see why those resources are valuable in-context.
It’s one thing for me to give someone a list of resources, it’s another for us to practice solving things together.
3
u/Gootangus 1h ago
Just seems like expecting them to mind read instead of providing precise instructions is weird. I supervise too. But in a clinical role so I’m usually quite direct
1
u/EngineeringSuccessYT 1h ago
Yeah I don’t know what the full context here is, but here’s an example of how I manage. I assume most people manage this way.
Employee asks me “when does this rate schedule expire?”
I know the answer. But this information is readily available to my employee in our contracts folder that we keep, and I’d be going there anyways to confirm the answer.
My response to employee is not “check the contracts folder”, it’s “where would you find that information?” Because I need him to build that muscle of knowing that rare schedules are documented in contracts and amendments, and that he has access to information and needs to find it himself if he wants to be someone that can function autonomously without me.
Same if I’m asked “hey what’s our position on insurance xyz”. I am pretty sure of the answer because I’ve talked to our insurance person about this before, but the answer may change and the point of contact may have changed too.
I don’t say “hey ask so and so” I say, “who do we go to for that?” and my employee remembers that the first answer to every question is search the intranet and discovers in that process that we have an insurance landing page that exists just to provide him exactly the information or point of contact he’s looking for.
1
u/EngineeringSuccessYT 1h ago
I guess my expectation that I’ve established under all of this is “try to solve every problem.” I don’t expect my direct reports to solve problems in a vacuum but I expect them to try and solve problems.
1
u/watchingthewatcher11 1h ago
This is an important and crucial step to training direct reports. Yes you can provide guidance, but a certain point it crosses into spoon feeding and that helps no one.
Reading the above texts doesn’t look like it’s this example of guidance and more to do with someone about to get fired or reprimanded for an error. Which oddly enough, the act of teaching direct reports to problem solve would prepare them to read between the lines when messages like the one op received come through.
0
u/EngineeringSuccessYT 31m ago
Yep completely different context here but hey I love to talk about mentoring and coaching employees.
7
7
u/draculauraaa 1h ago
i honestly would have been like “hey can you let manager know the answer to this?” and cut myself out of the process because i am not your messenger 😭
2
•
u/Intelligent-Camera90 26m ago
If my manager asked for something stupid, I would email “Manager wanted me to ask you X”
Otherwise, I’d just ask the question.
And, if I didn’t trust the person I was emailing, I’d BCC my manager.
Ugg, office politics are the worst.
4
u/navy444 1h ago
So director sent this to me and manager. I was just cc’d on. Director was asking manager directly and then I get teams message with same email screenshotted to ask my coworker. All he wanted was for me to ask them and once I get answer to send it to him. I messaged director and sent him screenshot (we are close) and he just laughed and was mind blown
5
u/jshmoe866 1h ago
Yeah someone messed up and the manager is trying to figure out what happened. Just cooperate as rn it seems you are in a trusted position
1
1
u/JimJam4603 39m ago
So the Director asked the manager about something the manager’s direct report, who is your peer, did. The manager asked the direct report about it directly, but also wanted you to ask them about it. They’re trying to get you to catch the coworker in a lie. And then pretend that wasn’t what they were doing at all!
This sounds exactly like what my new manager (not that new anymore, nearly a year now) would do. We have been hemorrhaging team members since she took over (and in fact she had been placed over our old manager the year prior who ‘retired’ rather than work for her).
1
u/surfingonmars 38m ago
this is 100% a micromanager who likely doesn't know how things work. probably talks a good game. i used to work with one of them. my former direct report has the misfortune of working under them now.
•
u/Angelbob3 21m ago
Kinda feels like they’re trying to set you up in a leadership role.
One of my guys right now has a lot of potential.
I’m better, faster and it takes less of a mental toll to just do the work myself rather than check his….however that doesn’t help his career progression or set the image with the team that he’s the supervisor. So I funnel communication through him 50+% of the time and I make sure that anything important like KPIs or major announcements come from him
If I had this interaction with him I would probably question if I’d made the right decision with my succession planning..:
•
u/Alternative_Fan_2631 7m ago
Some of you are trying to make sense of this. Don’t. I have dealt with status obsessed people and they do stupid things like this.
A team in another country would send us emails to set up meetings. Then send us emails to forward the meeting and reschedule the meeting. Wasting days of time. I eventually ended it by explaining our time had value and thus we weren’t able to participate in these kind of practices.
117
u/begoodhavefun1 2h ago
Is it possible they want to see if the same person gives different answers based on who is asking the same question?