There is another person above her on the VP level. I have been debating talking to him, even though HR has told me to not to. I just don’t understand how a company can hang onto someone who doesn’t pull their weight. Please advise. Thank you!!<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
How Do I Deal With A Lazy Manager<\/p>\n
OFFICE-POLITICS REPLY BY ERIKA ANDERSEN<\/strong> Dear How Do I Deal With A Lazy Manager,<\/p>\n Sadly, you\u2019ve stumbled into what has to be one of the most frustrating situations of modern work life: working for someone you don\u2019t respect. We want to work for people who are good managers and leaders: we like having bosses who are the leaders we want to become. On a more mundane level, we like working for people who do their work, so we don\u2019t have to do it!<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a very difficult situation to address: your boss has every right to delegate work to you, and it\u2019s a judgment call as to whether or not it\u2019s \u201ctoo much.<\/em>\u201d I fear you\u2019d be stepping into a major rat\u2019s nest to try to confront her (or others<\/em>) about it. If she was doing something more clearly inappropriate, I\u2019d suggest that you lean on HR more, or even go directly to her \u2014 but this is pretty amorphous, and it would, I predict, come down to \u201che said, she said<\/em>,\u201d which certainly wouldn\u2019t benefit you. In other words \u2013 sorry about this — it seems unlikely to me that your boss is going to change her behavior. It sounds as though she\u2019s been behaving like this for a long time with no consequences, so why should she do anything differently?<\/p>\n OK, what choices do you have? At the end of the day, you can stay or leave (I find myself saying this to people a lot \u2013 in situations like this, it\u2019s easy to hang around for years, waiting and hoping the other person might change.<\/em>) If you decide to leave, do your level best to find an organization where doing the job is required and rewarded, and where your boss has a reputation for commitment and accomplishment. You\u2019ll be much happier.<\/p>\n If you want to stay, I\u2019d suggest you look around and assess whether your boss\u2019 behavior is the norm, or whether she\u2019s an aberration. If she\u2019s the norm, go back to the previous paragraph….put your resume together and get out of there! <\/p>\n However, if most people seem to be getting rewarded for hard work and good results — then be that kind of person to the nth degree. Be unusually competent, collaborative and self-starting. AND let people know that you\u2019re interested in moving up in the company, if you are (that would, for instance, be a much more productive conversation to have with the person on the VP level than the complaining-about-your-boss conversation<\/em>). Shine by contrast with your boss: do the work she dumps on you quickly, and with quality. Then, when someone else in the company wants to poach you, jump at the chance.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve noticed, I\u2019m sure, that all my suggestions are about what you can do differently. I get that it doesn\u2019t seem fair for you to solve the problem when she\u2019s the one doing her nails and buying dog beds (or whatever<\/em>) online. However, I\u2019m just trying to be your reality check here: I can\u2019t see a compelling reason for her to put down the nail polish. <\/p>\n So: be the kind of employee you\u2019d like her to be, and see what happens.<\/p>\n Thank you for writing to Office-Politics \u2013 keep us posted!<\/p>\n Best of luck,<\/p>\n Erika Andersen, Author<\/p>\n Erika Andersen<\/a> is the author of the newly released Growing Great Employees<\/a>, which is a Kirkus Reviews recommended business book for 2007. Erika Andersen and her colleagues at Proteus International, the company she founded in 1990, offer practical approaches for individuals and organizations to clarify and move toward their hoped-for-future. Much of Erika\u2019s recent work has focused on vision and strategy, executive coaching, and culture change. She has served as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and senior executives of corporations like MTV Networks, Molson Coors Brewing, Rainbow Media Holdings, Union Square Hospitality Group, and Comcast Corporation. Erika is an inaugural author of the Penguin Speakers Bureau, and she has been quoted in the New York Times, Industry Week, Investors\u2019 Business daily, and Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Office-Politics, I’ve been working under my current manager for about three years. She is a very nice lady; however, she has a terrible work ethic. Routinely arriving late to work, leaving early, going on shopping trips or hair appointments in the middle of the day, surfing the net or playing Solitaire for several hours, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climbing-the-ladder","category-office-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"erika](\"\/images\/andersen.jpg\")
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