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Project Management National Conference 2011 PMI India

Learn how to identify and deal with
your "Negative Boss" and
"Negative Peer Managers"

Vimal Kumar Khanna
Managing Director – mCalibre Technologies

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Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management


Contents

1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................4
2 RELATED WORK............................................................................................................4
3 NEGATIVE BOSS.............................................................................................................6
4 NEGATIVE PEER MANAGERS...................................................................................10
5 REFERENCES.................................................................................................................13
6 Author’s Profile................................................................................................................13

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Abstract- We discuss a special breed of managers termed as “Negative Managers”. These managers
are not capable to handle their responsibilities and hence resort to undue means to hide their
incapability. We discuss ways by which you can identify and deal with your “Negative Boss” and
“Negative Peer Managers”, with case studies from leading global software product and services
companies.

Keywords: Negative Manager, People Management, Soft Skills.

1 INTRODUCTION

Companies sometimes have some managers who can be termed as “Negative
Managers”. A Negative Manager is a manager who is incapable to handle his
role and responsibility but hides his incapability by resorting to undue means-
unethical/unprincipled behaviour, lies, cunningness, pettiness, games/politics, ill-
manners, etc. We describe ways by which you can identify and deal with your
“Negative Boss” and your “Negative Peer Managers”, with case studies from
leading global software product and services organisations.

2 RELATED WORK

Our work builds upon, expands and complements the related work in literature
on application of psychology techniques to handling inter-personal relationship.

Transaction Analysis (TA) theory [2,3,4] states that the way individuals transact
with each other is due to their being in one of three ego states – “parent” state
where they behave like their parents behaved; “child” state where they behave
as they used to behave in their childhood; or “Adult” state where they behave
maturely after objectively evaluating the facts.

TA introduces a concept called ‘games’ that imply a complicated transaction
where the latent meaning of the communication is quite different from the words
spoken [2]. Individuals must sense the game being played by others and respond
accordingly, else they will suffer. The behaviour of the negative managers can be
mapped to “Second Degree” games under TA – the games that are played in a
clandestine fashion and can cause significant harm to you (your career).

It has been discussed in [1] that you should pay attention to the games other
managers play, to ferret out the true tenor of communication and to respond by
putting on the suitable cap of an ‘adult’, ‘parent’ or a ‘child’.

However, all the above works assume that you can decipher the games being
played by negative managers to deal with them. Unfortunately, negative

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managers behave in very cunning and subtle fashion and are able to hide the
fact that they are playing games. It has been stated in [1] that if you are unable to
sense the game, you are certainly going to lose. Hence, you need to learn
techniques to identify the games being played by negative managers. We are
suggesting multiple such techniques.

Further, the above works suggest mechanisms to deal with game being played in
an individual transaction (i.e, the current transaction). Hence the solutions are
short-term. The actions of negative managers can cause long-term harm to your
career. Hence, we also present mechanisms to neutralise their actions on a long-
term basis.

Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT) states that one’s behaviour is
dominated more by one’s beliefs than by actual stimulus [5,6]. A person with
positive beliefs does not grumble about unfavourable conditions, does not
indulge in self-blame on failures, and uses his positive energy to tackle a
negative event to ameliorate its unfavourable consequence.

The behaviour of a negative manager can influence your beliefs, and your line of
thinking on a subject matter may get distracted, resulting in your making wrong
decisions. It is suggested in [1] that you should harness REBT to keep off the
unnecessary influence from polluting your own rational belief system. By sticking
to your positive beliefs, you would be able to succeed in your tasks.

However, negative managers not only impact your beliefs but also negatively
influence the people and work environment around you. Hence, sticking to your
beliefs alone may still make you fail due to these external factors. You would
need to take some additional steps to totally neutralise these external influences
of negative managers, as described in this paper.

Company HR managers generally interpret the personality types and negative
behaviours of its managers and reform them by TA/REBT techniques. HR
reforms negative managers by inculcating in them a positive belief system
(REBT) or by sharpening their “Adult” ego mode (TA).

However, to achieve this objective the HR needs to interpret the personality type
and detailed behaviour patterns of these negative managers, to be able to map
them to known types to decide requisite therapy. The techniques presented by
us would allow you to decipher large number of these behaviour patterns of a
negative manager to be reported to HR. Hence, our work complements the TA
and REBT approaches in this respect.

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It has been discussed in [1] that some managers have personality disorders like
being paranoid/histrionic/narcissistic and they have presented mechanisms to
deal with them.

However, our work is different from the above work since a negative manager is
not suffering from an inherent personality disorder over which he has no control.
He is deliberately engaging in negative behaviour to hide his limitations. Hence,
different techniques are required to handle such behaviour, as presented in this
paper.

3 NEGATIVE BOSS

3.1.1 Identifying your Negative Boss

You should look for the following behaviour to identify if your Boss is less
capable than you and is acting negatively-

1) He cannot apply scientific methods of management. However, he remembers
these management theories by heart and can quote them at length in front of
top management. Hence, top management does not believe that the project
deliverables are failing due to his lack of management skills. He fools them
into believing that the failures are due to lack of skills of his reporting team.

2) Due to his lack of understanding of scientific management methods, he can
never judge the capability of his reportee managers. If you are ensuring that
scientific management processes are being followed, project targets are
being met and all issues are under control then he concludes that you are not
working hard! Instead, he is happy when an incapable reportee manager
regularly creates crises, is always fire fighting and his team always looks
hassled. He believes that it is a good scenario since the team always “looks
busy” and the manager always “works hard”.

3) He does not think long term. Most of his decisions are made instantly to fight
the current fire, although these may lead to bigger fires later.

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4) He picks up ideas from his reportees and presents them to top management
as his own ideas.

5) He feels insecure of having more capable reportees under him since he fears
that in the future they may out-perform him, and finally replace him. Hence,
he recruits less capable reportees. When the top management interacts with
him and his team, his lack of skills is not exposed since he is surrounded by
more incapable persons. Thus, comparatively, he looks capable to top
management.

6) However, this process of recruiting incapable reportees significantly hurts the
organisation in the long run. He recruits incapable managers. These
incapable managers recruit even more incapable reportees. Hence, in the
long run, the company is infested with very incapable managers at all levels.

7) He avoids having open channels of communication with his capable reportee
managers since he knows that if he talks in front of them his incapability
would be exposed. Instead, he always has open channels for incapable
managers and they keep sharing inane management ideas at length among
them.

8) He will try all means to get rid of you. He would ensure that your capabilities
are not exposed to top management. If a complex problem is encountered,
he is aware that his incapable reportees cannot handle it. Hence, he would
smartly couple you with his incapable reportees as a “team” to tackle the
problem. If you would be able to provide a solution, he would make you share
the credit with incapable reportees since they worked together as a “team”.
He may even hide the fact that you found the solution, and give all the credit
to the incapable reportees.

9) He would always paint a more positive image of his incapable reportees, as
compared to you, in front of top management. He will promote incapable
reportees but would not give you a growth path.

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10) He would get to know you dislikes, either during your job interview or in
course of your stay in the organisation. He would then ensure that your work
environment and responsibilities are as per your dislikes, to provoke you to
leave. E.g., if he knows your technical domain of interest, he would ensure
that you are never assigned projects to be managed in that domain.

11) However, if all means to discourage you to make you leave the organisation
fail then he will resort to sending you insulting mails with personal attacks,
and mark mail copies to your reportee team and your peers. The aim is to
provoke you to respond in a similar fashion. If you respond with a curt mail,
he will distort the contents and use them to play more politics by sharing your
curt responses with the top management without informing them of his
provocations.

3.1.2 Dealing with your Negative Boss

After you have noticed his above behaviour you would have identified that your
Boss is negative. You should first have a one-on-one talk with him informing how
is behaviour is impacting your performance. If your Boss can provide genuine
reasons for his behaviour then he may not be negative as you had assumed.
Alternatively, even if he had been negative, after this conversation he should
realise his mistakes and should stop behaving in that fashion. However, if none
of these happens and his negative behaviour continues as before then it is a
confirmed case of his being a Negative Boss and would need to be dealt with in
the following ways-

i) Ensure that he is not able to hide your capabilities from the top management.
Showcase your capabilities to all through participation in company-wide
committees/forums, by holding company-wide lectures to present your
successes and innovative methodologies, etc.

ii) Expose his negative behaviour by retaining written records of his
misdemeanours. He would insist on having his negative communication with
you in verbal form, since he does not want any written records that can make
him accountable. You should insist on written communication from him. If he
communicates orally in a meeting with you then after the meeting send a mail
to him summarising the contents of his discussions and your responses.

iii) If he is sending you insulting mails then do not get provoked and send similar
curt responses. Separate the content portion of the mail, which attacks some
actions you may have taken, from the insulting tone of the mail. Respond with
two separate mails to him. Respond objectively to each point in the content of
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the mail by justifying the reasons for your actions. Send another mail making
it amply clear to him that his insulting language is unwarranted.

iv) If you have realised that he is going to significantly harm your career then
escalate his negative actions to HR before it is too late. You should mark
copies to HR of the above responses you are sending to his insulting mails.
You should also share information about all his prior negative actions for HR
to take appropriate measures. HR can then apply TA/REBT methods to
reform him.

v) Build relations with your boss’ peers to be able to switch to their groups in the
future, if things go totally out of control. Your participation in committees and
conducting company-wide lectures would have already apprised them of your
capabilities.

3.1.3 CASE STUDY

A software services company had an incapable General Manager (GM). He had
a more capable Manager “A” under him, and was feeling insecure from him. The
GM decided to hire managers less capable than him. In his previous company,
he had a reportee manager “B”. That company had outsourced a large 50-
member software development project to a services company and “B” was
coordinating this task. The GM hired “B” by wrongly informing the top
management that “B” was actually “managing” that large team.

A team was to be selected to visit a global software product giant to win projects.
The GM decided to have “A” in the team since he had the capability to win the
orders, but also tagged along his favourite “B”. The team ended up winning two
pilot project orders from the customer. “A” was responsible for winning one of
these orders and was made the project head for the pilot project with a 6-person
team. The pilot was executed successfully, and the highly satisfied customer
decided to assign a 3-year software development lab of 67 persons to them.

The GM was now worried that if “A” starts handling such a big responsibility, “A”
could become his competition. The GM informed the top management that the
project was won by the “team” of “A” and “B”, and hence “B” is as much aware of
the project as “A” is. Interestingly, when the team had visited the customer
location, only “A” was in that project meeting since “B” was in a separate project
meeting. Further, he convinced top management that “B” had “managed” large
projects in his earlier company, and “A” did not have experience in handling such
a large team. Hence, the GM convinced the top management to make “B” the
project head of the lab.

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Since “B” had never managed a software project and had only been handling
project coordination activities, he failed badly to deliver. After the first project
delivery date, the customer team expressed their total disappointed with results
and reduced the lab size from 67 to only 30.

The GM now realised that they would be unable to deliver without involving “A”
and could end up losing the lab totally. Hence, he asked “A” to rejoin the team,
but report to “B”! “A” escalated the issue to top management with all the details
and refused to be demoted to being just a manager for a project for which he
was project head for the pilot. “A”, instead, offered to execute some critical
modules of the projects within his team, outside of the lab. The mechanism
worked to the good of all since “A” kept on delivering on critical issues and also
kept customer tempers under control by effectively using the earlier good
relations he had developed with the customer managers during the pilot
execution.

Solution

“A” should have kept the company top management in loop about the ongoing
pilot project and made them aware that he was leading the activity. He could
have held company-wide sessions, inviting the top management, presenting
details of his meetings with customer and progress on the ongoing pilot. If he had
become visible then the GM would not have been able to blur his contributions
once the pilot had been successfully completed. Further, “A” should have also
developed close personal relationship with the customer managers, who would
have then insisted on having “A” as the lab head.

4 NEGATIVE PEER MANAGERS

4.1 Identifying your Negative Peer Managers

We suggest you to look for the following behaviour to identify if your peer
manager is acting negatively-

1) He will try to bring you down in the eyes of the boss by talking negative about
you at your back. However, he knows that the boss may not believe his
adverse comments. Hence, he plays smart and fools the boss by first
praising you by saying that you are capable; but would then also add that you
are taking some wrong actions. He would then use the opportunity to
repetitively talk negative about your actions. The boss does not realise that
he is playing politics but thinks that since he was praising you, he is your well
wisher and is “genuinely” raising some concerns. Hence, slowly boss starts
gaining negative impression about you.

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2) He may also get together with another negative manager and they separately
backbite against you to the boss. Hence, the boss now gets “corroboration” of
your wrong doings and hence does not need to investigate further. Falsehood
becomes truth for the boss and your career gets impacted.

3) If he is working with you in a team project, he takes credit of successful tasks
and blames the failed tasks on you.

4) He can go to any extent to cause harm to you and does not even care about
company’s interest while acting negatively.

4.2 Dealing with “Negative Peer Manager”

Some suggested ways to deal with your negative peer manager are-

i) Avoid sharing information with him about your ongoing project progress and
details about your team since he can potentially misuse any such information
against you. He would always try to sweet talk you into revealing such details
but be wise enough to know what his true intentions are.

ii) If you become aware of his spreading canards about you to your boss then
confront him in front of your boss with the actual facts and expose him.
Convey to him firmly that he should not resort to such acts in the future.

iii) If he is working with you as a peer in a large team project then keep your
boss informed about clear division of activities between the two of you. Keep
your boss aware of the progress of your tasks through written
communications with copies to the peer manager/team. Hence, the peer
manager will not be able to get opportunities to take credit of your successes
and blame his failures on you.

4.3 CASE STUDY

A startup was founded by a purely technical person as MD in US. He had never
managed a team in his career. He ended up hiring incapable CTO and CFO
under him in US.

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The company had been running a small India ODC. The MD decided to
significantly expand the ODC and hence hired a senior capable GM as ODC
head. His peers, the CFO and CTO in US, started feeling insecure due to the
GM’s presence in India. They feared that as more responsibilities are transferred
to ODC, the GM may end up hiring more capable CFO and CTO within India and
all their responsibilities would be transferred. Hence both of them decided to
collaborate to poison the MD against the ODC GM.

The GM wanted to hire senior managers but noticed that current salary levels
were much lower than market salaries. Hence he requested a salary survey.
CFO struck down the idea by the reasoning that being a startup they should
control costs by not spending on such surveys! Hence, the GM started hiring at
industry salary-levels he was aware of. However, each time he wanted to give
job offer to a capable manager, the CFO objected saying salary offer is “high”
without any justification. Since The MD had no knowledge of salary-levels in
India he fell back on the opinion of his CTO, who conveniently supported CFO’s
viewpoint. Hence, no offers could be made. The CFO and CTO, instead, kept
blaming lack of senior people on the GM’s inability to attract good talent. The
CTO, cunningly, even directly hired some incapable managers in ODC just to
prove that managers can be hired if effort is made!

Left with the option to work with only a young team, GM groomed them to be
project managers/leads. They started taking up higher responsibilities and were
even able to interact directly with their US counterparts. Since the CTO could not
raise other objections, he distorted this fact by informing the MD that the GM was
interacting lesser with managers in HO and making lesser trips to US! The
differences between the GM and US management became irreconcilable and the
GM finally left.

The US management team directly took control of the ODC. But all the earlier
negative actions of the CTO and CFO started backfiring. Since the project
management layer in ODC was now no longer given the management
responsibilities, the US managers had to manage large distributed teams, and
failed to deliver. Further, senior incapable persons hired directly by the CTO in
the ODC ruined ongoing projects.

Company deliverables were significantly impacted due to a weak ODC. Finally,
within a year of the GM leaving, the global company underwent a fire sale by
being sold at just 10% of its valuation a year back.

Solution

The GM should have insisted on having regular status review calls with the MD.
In these discussions, the GM could have sensed any negative vibes coming from

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the MD. He should have then intelligently guessed that the MD is receiving false
and negative feedback about him from the CTO and CFO. He should have
countered this propaganda by objectively presenting the true facts to MD.
Further, during his visits to US, he should have insisted on extended meetings
with MD, CFO and CTO where he would have confronted them with the truth and
exposed their nefarious designs to the MD.

5 REFERENCES

1. Damle, Pramod (2010) Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective
Project Management, PMI India Conference 2010.

2. Berne, Eric (1964) Games People Play. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-14-
002768-8.

3. Berne, Eric (1975) A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis,
Grover Press; ISBN 0-394-17833-X

4. Berne, Eric (1975) What Do You Say After You Say Hello? ISBN 0-552-
09806-X.

5. Ellis, Albert (1962). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy. Secaucus, NJ:
Citadel Press.

6. Froggatt, Wayne. (1990-2001). A brief introduction to Rational Emotive
Behaviour Therapy. (http://www.anapsys.co.uk/files/Brief%20Introduction
%20to%20REBT.htm)

6 Author’s Profile

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Vimal Kumar Khanna is the Founder and Managing Director of “mCalibre
Technologies”, a Mobile Software Product startup in New Delhi. He has
over 26 years industry experience and has won multiple international
honours. He is listed in “Marquis Who’s Who in the World”. He is also
among 50 select experts in the world to be on “IEEE Communications”
(pub. New York) Editorial Board (invited honorary position) since 1999.
His multiple independently written papers have been published in leading
international journals and conferences, including PMI Global Congress
2010 - Asia Pacific, Melbourne; PMI Asia Pacific e-Link; PMI India
Conference 2010; etc.

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