Want To Irritate Your Boss?
Most of us don’t try to irritate the boss, we see no real positive gain in such. If your boss has empowered you to make decisions and act on their behalf, then my assumption is you probably are capable and have the power to answer questions that come up. As a leader, you are looking for people whom you can develop and hand off more responsibility to. Leaders need their people to think through problems, respond and handle situations with sound judgement. A real leader can’t and should not be the person handling all the questions and tough situations. Leaders should never be the only one who can answer, and those that are, are probably causing a bottle neck in the entire work process.
Wherever you are in the operational chain of command, remember: If you want to irritate your boss, then don’t resolve the problems and pass the buck back up to them – especially on trivial matters. This will not only irritate the boss; they may even question why they put you in that position to begin with. I would.
When a subordinate passes a matter up to you without resolving it, what should you do? Here is what I do. One, as soon as possible find out what the person’s thought process was as to why they did not resolve it. Two, why did they miss the opportunity to resolve it and three, how could they have answered it if they had tried.
The worse thing to do is to ignore that the event happened or waste precious time talking about the missed opportunity. In the case that happened to me recently, the person knew the answer. They told me the correct answer when I asked them, but for some reason they became afraid when someone outside the department questioned their judgement. So, the buck was passed up to me. It took 20 minutes out of my day to investigate the situation, respond to the email and follow up on how to handle this in the future. The response I gave in my email was the response they gave me when I called to ask about it. This person was copied on the email I sent, in hopes that next time they would trust the knowledge and skill I knew them to have.
I was really surprised when this person whom I trusted and knew was capable passed the buck back up to me. Very irritating. But it does happen. Clear communication with your boss, and your team members is always the way to proceed. Don’t just pass the buck back up…unless you really do want to irritate your boss.
