What to Do When a Direct Report Is Bullying You | Hacker News Reader

What to Do When a Direct Report Is Bullying You

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8 pointsmooreds7 comments

This happened to me. It is very challenging if your manager doesn’t support you. If you start getting undermined by getting skipped over, it is your direct managers job to stop it.

I found my direct manager was not covering me so I asked for the person to be moved out from under me.

I also refused to do any further management under these circumstances. If you have no top level cover: You are in a very compromised position as a middle manager.

Being a manager requires being protected.If you are not being covered then get out of there.

This person was monopolizing my budget because my direct manager gave them control over the funding. I told my direct manager that I need to run the budget and they refused to give me control.

If you are in this situation you have to get out.

You need to grow some balls, tell them to do what they're told (and paid for), or they're fired.

It really is that simple. You're the boss, act like it. They're not your friends, they're your employees. Make it clear from the beginning what is expected of them, and then have the balls to follow through if they fail to meet your expectations. It's literally your job to manage them, so do it. If someone on your team isn't contributing, get rid of them.

Well, bullying is not something one person does to another person, it is something one person does to another person with the support of a group and that is what makes it the ‘social destruction of self’.

Of course the senior person has the explicit support of the organization and has the advantage in this game but a junior who can recruit supporters can also wreak havoc.

I learned a lot about organizational psychology from a high school science teacher who had a career in the Air Force, particularly the dangers of bypassing the chain of command.

There are very good reasons to do it, in some places the chain of command does not work and being effective is all about being good at bypassing it. (A key skill in vendor management is recognizing pathology at vendors and bypassing it.)

The most harrowing story in that article, though, is about a junior who has turned the manager’s supervisor against them. That’s the kind of situation that makes jumping the hierarchy so dangerous even though the usual case is that the person in the middle gets mad the hierarchy jumping on principle.

When Leila asked her manager, Gemma, why Angel was allowed to come to her for decisions, Gemma chided Leila for her “lack of vision” and criticized her “poor communication” and “weak leadership” — all while praising Angel’s “initiative.” Gemma had never raised these issues with Leila before, but in response to Leila’s questioning, pressured her to resign or be demoted.

The whole premise of this article is flawed (at least as applies to the example the chose as an illustration). At the end of the day, it isn't Angel who is "doing" all this stuff to Leila; it's really her boss, Gemma. If Gemma was doing his/her job, this would have been over before it started.

A lot of corporate drama works this way - you just have to learn to read between the lines.

I try to give these articles/guidance a lot of leeway, but for godssakes: (1) tell them to stop, (2) escalate if necessary, (3) consider termination if it is disrupting your work environment.

It gets really interesting when the setup is a diversity hire lieutenant and an experienced white male sergeant in a safety-critical industry. One person thinks she is being bullied, and the other one just wants to save his life.

Let me just make something up and claim it's interesting, I have no ulterior motives for doing this

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