For the first time ever, I can't get along with my new boss. Whose fault is it?

Recently, a spate of former colleagues have reached out for advice about the best way to deal with a new and "aggressive" boss. It's prompted a lot of painful memories for me as I tried to help them and remembered my own encounter (in the distant past thank goodness), with a boss who for the first time in my career didn't think I was anything special. I remembered how I had found myself doubting, worried and insecure about the very same things I'd been told by previous managers were my strengths. It felt like an alternate and tortuous universe, where everything I had previously believed about myself had been turned upside down. Unfortunately, this scenario is likely to happen to everyone at some point in the career if it hasn't already.

A top employee has tons of success with awards and great reviews for years, only to at some point cross a manager who sees none of the positives. Suddenly, it's a fight to the death through micro management, performance plans, and a job change. It's happened to four close friends of mine in the past year alone. Besides the obvious reasons, poor training, not inherently suited for management, or the victim of some childhood trauma (among countless others), why do some in leadership behave this way?

As my friend and I talked through his problem, I was startled to realize that the pattern was very familiar and we had a breakthrough. Personality type matters!

DISC and Myers Briggs are two of the many tests which attempt to quantify personality types. A dirty secret in management is that managers nearly always seek to hire themselves (personality type). In my case, I had inherited a leader who had nearly the opposite style of my own and the results were completely predictable as I didn't 'speak' his language. It wasn't so much my actions that caused our disconnect, but the way I was communicating them and this played out in the fact that he had strong relationships with those he had hired and a platoon of those he didn't, fleeing his team.

If you find yourself struggling with the same issue, consider personality types as a possible cause and corrective action.

• Be conscious of your delivery in every conversation. My friend is a southern guy, charming, funny and full of long stories. His new boss is a sensor, driver, type A. If he's not shortening his responses and answers to 15 seconds and short soundbites, he's losing ground.
• Take yourself out of your current personality type and put yourself in the other person's shoes. Deliver the info that matters to the other side. For instance, "Feelers" like myself, want to talk about people and relationships. Many of the other personality types don't want to stay here for long or have no desire to approach it at all. In fact, some of them may see my focus on people as a lack of focus on execution. That's not true, but it may be a perception that hurts.
• If you're a leader, ask yourself this question and answer honestly. Am I flexing and adapting my delivery style to those on my team or are they all adapting to me? If the latter is your answer, you can do and should do better. One of the least surprising things about my journey is seeing that my friends in leadership who were the most rigid and who required their teams to flex to them rather than the other way around ended up being unable to flex to their own managers when the new sheriff came to town. It was a humbling lesson for many of them.

At the end of the day, I made it and you can too. My friend is already thinking of the many ways he didn't speak his leader's 'language' and he's going to be more conscious of his delivery moving forward. He's also going to speak to his team differently. What a win win. As for me, I flexed my delivery enough to repair my relationship and was able to stay true to my values. I ended up leaving that organization to work for a wonderful leader who's supported and given me countless opportunities to shine. I wish the same for you. As always let me know if I can help, and keep moving forward!

#peoplecenteredleadership #culture #crushlearning