The person you're responding to said they'd approach it as an interpersonal conflict if the IC "is combative and fighting with their manager at every turn."
Everyone has to be mature and professional at work. Yes, management might be held to slightly higher standards, but being combative and fighting with your manager at every turn is below the standard for anyone.
If managers are disagreeing in public, it is either because they never agreed to something in private beforehand (poor communication) or because the couldn't stick to the agreement (lack of professionalism). Such disagreement is thus a symptom, not a cause of management problems. You shouldn't be undermining eachother with arguments, but forbidding such arguments does not fix the underlying issue, it only hides it and lets it fester.
If a problem continues to be a problem after having some polite conversations about it, then it's time to take the conversation to managers. It's then the managers' role to find a solution.
If it keeps being a problem after that (only in an extreme minority of cases would this be true), then yes, I'd transfer or look for a different job.
But engaging in a war of talking over each other is just stupid and immature. I have kids, so I guess I prefer the workplace to consist of adults acting like adults.
As an IC you can't tell other teams managers or higher ups or PMs to fuck off if they call you directly and tell you they think what you are doing isn't good. Or if they ask for unreasonable stuff. At least without fear of getting fired. A manager needs to prevent this from happening
This is far too extreme a position and ends up being false as a consequence. Alternatively, you've had a bad pick of managers.
A human relationship with your manager with mutual care is possible.
The thing to understand is this: your manager is not the business.
Unless you're working in a truly tiny company, they operate under their own set of constraints and will have to make decisions they're not really happy about. If that means firing you or low-balling your salary, then sure, you may not care much for that distinction in the hurt of the moment. And maybe they really are out to get you.
But if you treat your manager like an antagonist, don't be surprised if they end up doing the same to you.
The manager's job is to communicate necessary information to the whole team. The IC isn't. If a manager starts abusing that presumption to schedule irrelevant meetings, people will respond appropriately.
There's no silver bullet. It's equally hard to determine when a manager is acting against subordinates because of petty grudges, or when a manager is acting against subordinates because they're bad at effectively telling subordinates what they want. I think that's kinda the job you sign up for when you choose to join higher-level management.
Yes, you should be able to tell your direct manager basically what you told us. Copy and paste into an email if that’s easier. (Your tone here is fine.)
It does sound like your manager’s manager has poor people skills / favors a more confrontational management style. If you have a good direct manager that can be tolerable, up to you to decide how much it bothers you.
As a manager, and I have no compunction telling my team to try and fight their own battles first, and if they need to refer someone to me to resolve the issue, then to do so. I'm there to support my team 100% at all times as well as to deliver business outcomes.
If you're getting upset over issues like this, perhaps management is not for you. Of course it may also depend on how tenuous the relationship with your own manager is.
I'm not disagreeing with what you say, but I am having trouble connecting your comment to mine - did you mean to reply to someone else?
> Put yourself in their shoes, and think about what they care about, what they value, and then whatever you want to do, express it to them with reference to their perspective.
Agreed, but applies equally to managers as it does to employees.
> Most fighting and animosity in the world is caused by people talking past each other, not engaging in actual constructive dialogue.
The challenge in doing this is that there is often a great deal of information asymmetry between employees and management. It's quite common for managers not to be completely transparent (and at times, they're not allowed to when it comes to things like compensation). This automatically (and in my opinion, fairly) results in employees withholding information (personal motives, etc) as well. When there is either a power or information asymmetry, you'll find that usually the one who has the more power/information has to put in more effort to win the trust of the other.
Well THAT is a reasonable response after full examination of situation and facts and background and context and people!
Thx God you don't "have enough contacts"!
... I think I'd rather have the other guy as manager than you - there's a CHANCE that guy is not short tempered trigger happy a hole (slim as it may be;)
When there are actual management problems happening, probably it's also not so comfortable for the manager to get criticised as a single person, no matter how polite it is. So jointly discussing topics should probably happen regularly.
There's a difference between having some awareness of interpersonal challenges my team have, versus one of them having, among the list of 61 principles by which they govern themselves, 'keeping me up to date on who they are having difficulty working with'. I mean, I note that there isn't a corresponding advice to 'keep your manager up to date on people you enjoy working with'.
Overall, it just sounds like they plan on making problems and then bringing them to me to resolve. Which, sure, would require 'managing'.
I've often found that when people complain about a manager not being attuned to interposal dynamics it's because there is an issue below the the surface of the team that isn't easily seen and not being communicated.
As a manager, I've been in situations where something bad has happened for months that was completely outside of my view. I had absolutely no visibility. Nobody was telling me anything.
The best way to manage up is to directly tell me what is going on.
Sometimes people try and make little off hand jokes or passive aggressively and indirectly include a cryptic sentence in an email or a standup. "Jim and Georgia are handling the unit tests, but you know how they've been, haha..."
I follow up and people will say something like "oh they've had a disagreement over types of tests" and no one will tell me there have been bitter feuds at every meeting for half a year. Jim and Georgia both say nothing, the team won't say anything, and then somebody on Hacker News says I'm incompetent and not attuned to interpersonal dynamics. ;)
This isn't a specific example from experience but a hypothetical to give you some idea of what the bad manager could be working with.
Delegation gets tricky too. Although I won't code or do technical individual contributor work I won't delegate other tasks because I perceive you as being busy enough already.
This seems pretty passive aggressive. Wouldn't it be better to be proactive and bring it to their attention of their manager directly? i.e. request a private with problematic person's manager and outline concerns. Generally you shouldn't go over your manager's head, but when that person is the problem then in my mind that's an exception.
If it goes badly then it is time to start looking for a new job. But if you have a reasonable company culture then it shouldn't do. This is why employees (even senior ones) have managers.
Everyone has to be mature and professional at work. Yes, management might be held to slightly higher standards, but being combative and fighting with your manager at every turn is below the standard for anyone.
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