Singapore Expats

Say you're involved in a big and very important project and who is appointed to be the project leader/manager is a bossy person who is disliked by almost everybody in the team for that project cause of his bossy nature, managing by fear kind of thing.
How would you deal to work together with this kind of person?

Directly.

Asking him why he needs to act like that, if you can't find an agreement, working as a team instead of a competition ... Evocate the bad ambient around (without names, to avoid revenge), try to solve the difficulty with him (without saying that HE is the difficulty).
Face to face ... no other people around not to be taken as a direct attack. (but it is).

And if it doesn't work, take him apart again, and explain directly why his attitude endanger the project... He won't like you anymore, but he surely will make some efforts after that for the others.

In my opinion the biggest issue is, is this person a good boss despite the bossy-ness? Is he (I'll talk about he even though of course he could be a she) able to lead the project to a good end, is he fair in comments (though short in speech as he may be)? It is much more difficult to work with an incompetent boss than it is to work with a bossy one.

I know it might sound lame, but the best thing would just be to do the job as good as you can, so he won't have reason to boss you around. And try to work more independent, together with other colleagues, perhaps. That shouldn't be a problem since they also don't like him. And to him (and his/her bosses) that hopefully will look good, in terms of involvement in the project, again giving him less reasons to boss around. And when dealing with him and his natural bossy-ness, indeed be as short and correct as possible would be better. No need to prolongue the unpleasant contact any longer than necessary, I'd say...

Putting him apart will tense the situation more, if he already feel that he has to show his authority around to be heard, it will be worst.

Better to have an adult discussion first, and if he's not mature enough, then you can go to Crabathor's solution ...

Bend over and take it like a man. If his designation is higher than yours and has served a significant number of years at the company, there's almost no chance in hell any discussion will be satisfying. Even if you catch him on an off day, you can be sure it'll come back and bite you on the arse one day.

That said, always find some way of getting back. Like subscribing to gay pr0n with his work email. Hopefully he isn't.

Kimi wrote:Say you're involved in a big and very important project and who is appointed to be the project leader/manager is a bossy person who is disliked by almost everybody in the team for that project cause of his bossy nature, managing by fear kind of thing.
How would you deal to work together with this kind of person?

It depends. If I am a critical part of the project and very hard to replace, I would tell him to f*ck off. Project managers must rely upon informal power to really get things done.

If I am a lesser cog in the machinery I would enlist my project team to help the project fail. He'll get the blame. A project is a team effort and a tyrant contributes nothing. This has to be carefully done, of course. It means never taking the initiative to make the project a success... rather doing only exactly as instructed... which is never enough... especially from a tyrant.

Is the project being done in a fully projectized company or are the team members on loan from other departments. If the latter, make sure that you put your department priorities first... your department boss will support you.

If you've got the cahones, threaten him... perhaps that you will go to the project sponsor because the project is so off track. Don't document his abusiveness... document his failures... and make sure that he knows you know. This is a high risk strategy and it helps to know who support whom.

Strong Eagle wrote: If I am a lesser cog in the machinery I would enlist my project team to help the project fail.

This is certainly NOT the way to go about it. If its a team effort then the team will share in the leaders blame.

If there's no way around the project leader politically then make sure the project is a roaring success and make sure that everyone in the company knows that it was the team not the leader (or any one individual) that made it so. Make sure to keep critical details from the leader or be vague if they ask you so that when it comes time to deliver the project they won't know what they are talking about and will need to enlist the rest of the team to present. It's all in the marketing.

cyber_m0nkey wrote:

Strong Eagle wrote: If I am a lesser cog in the machinery I would enlist my project team to help the project fail.

This is certainly NOT the way to go about it. If its a team effort then the team will share in the leaders blame.

If there's no way around the project leader politically then make sure the project is a roaring success and make sure that everyone in the company knows that it was the team not the leader (or any one individual) that made it so. Make sure to keep critical details from the leader or be vague if they ask you so that when it comes time to deliver the project they won't know what they are talking about and will need to enlist the rest of the team to present. It's all in the marketing.

She asked what to do about the guy. There are really only two options. Get rid of him or neutralize him. Helping this guy out only consolidates his power and makes him think he is doing the right thing.

And yes, while the team _can_ get the blame, it is most often an incompetent project manager that gets axed... he's got the talent working for him and he doesn't know how to use it. Just like in sports, it's the manager that gets whacked for an underperforming team.