Bosses who don’t communicate
Many managers with no previous leadership experience are poor communicators. This isn’t surprising, because the communication skills required to be a good manager are generally only learned through experience.
One common situation you’ll find yourself encountering under this type of person is working on a team of people who are out of sync. For example, your boss may tell you about an important upcoming project, but no one else hears about it until the last minute. On the other hand, you may also find yourself in a position where everyone else knows some crucial piece of information except you.
The best solution is for your boss to learn how to communicate as a leader. You can try to encourage them to communicate better by suggesting weekly meetings, memos to the whole team, etc. However, if you can’t change your boss, here are some things that might help improve the situation.
- Create a group email address for the whole team. Sometimes, giving your boss a mechanism to communicate with everyone just as simply as communicating with an individual, will help improve the communication.
- Notify everyone on your team of critical information. Don’t assume that your boss will tell people what they need to know. This can be a simple matter of summarizing what your boss has told you and emailing it to the entire team, including your boss. Your boss then has an opportunity to clarify themselves if you misunderstood something or they changed their mind.
- Create informal weekly meetings with your coworkers to go over anything important. Obviously, it is better if your boss is driving these, but even if it is just you and a few co-workers, a few minutes spent communicating can save you hours of work later on.
Other posts on dealing with an unorganized boss:
Originally published on December 18, 2005.
Dealing with demanding and uncommunicative managers or superiors is difficult and often frustrating especially if you care about your job and your contribution to the project. You simply can’t rely on that person and have to be on top of the work all the time. Rather than bearing it all alone and in silence, speak to your colleagues and other superiors and discuss the problem and how you feel about the situation. A group of unhappy workers are more effective than just one person.