I’d say you’re doing this the wrong way. You’re trying to do a mountain of inference on a mole hill of data. Take more data. This has been of my issues in life, and I’ve found life gets easier when I just ask. There is the concept of managing up—having to manage your manager, doing what you can to make sure your manager gets what they need from you, even if they don’t know how to arrange that themselves. If they’re incompetent, their incompetence is your problem.
First, you want to be adequately trained. Too many people focus on getting a list of what to do, instead of a list of the figures of merit. What are we trying to accomplish? What are our goals? What does a good job look like? What does a bad job look like? Stephen Covey distinguishes this as the difference between gopher delegation and stewardship delegation.
Second, instead of worrying about icebergs, ask for feedback, good and bad. People refrain from criticism often because they are uncomfortable giving it, and expect you to be uncomfortable getting it. They only bring it up when their annoyance with your failure overcomes their reticence about criticizing you. That’s not going to be a fun talk. Preempt that, and make clear that you want to do a good job, and want feedback to improve. That way they can bring up issues before their annoyance has mounted. When they’ve done that once or twice and it’s not a horrible experience, it gets easier for them to give you feedback in the future.
I don’t know if a restaurant is such a case (probably it isn’t; it seems especially common when you work for managers who have important duties besides managing), but there are jobs where the most important thing you need to do to please the manager is make sure you don’t do anything that needs the manager’s attention, because they don’t have time to deal with you. Asking the manager for advice in such a case is obviously something to be done rarely and carefully.
I think you could make the argument that a place where the manager doesn’t have time to deal with the people they manage is a poorly managed place. Maybe they need to hire assistant managers or more employees to do the non-managerial work.
If they don’t want to. But as an employee, I care about things that influence me directly; if the company is poorly managed to some degree but offers good wages, I still want to work for them, at least until I find something better. Trying to judge the management quality doesn’t seem to be a good employee strategy.
I’ve managed up with a bipolar pizza shop manager by getting myself a notebook and making explicit notes to reference later about how she wants certain cleaning tasks done. It really works.
Also, if you write a bunch of stuff down, give it back to your manager to verify. Lots of talking happens. Communication happens better through a document that both people can look at.
I’d say you’re doing this the wrong way. You’re trying to do a mountain of inference on a mole hill of data. Take more data. This has been of my issues in life, and I’ve found life gets easier when I just ask. There is the concept of managing up—having to manage your manager, doing what you can to make sure your manager gets what they need from you, even if they don’t know how to arrange that themselves. If they’re incompetent, their incompetence is your problem.
First, you want to be adequately trained. Too many people focus on getting a list of what to do, instead of a list of the figures of merit. What are we trying to accomplish? What are our goals? What does a good job look like? What does a bad job look like? Stephen Covey distinguishes this as the difference between gopher delegation and stewardship delegation.
Second, instead of worrying about icebergs, ask for feedback, good and bad. People refrain from criticism often because they are uncomfortable giving it, and expect you to be uncomfortable getting it. They only bring it up when their annoyance with your failure overcomes their reticence about criticizing you. That’s not going to be a fun talk. Preempt that, and make clear that you want to do a good job, and want feedback to improve. That way they can bring up issues before their annoyance has mounted. When they’ve done that once or twice and it’s not a horrible experience, it gets easier for them to give you feedback in the future.
I don’t know if a restaurant is such a case (probably it isn’t; it seems especially common when you work for managers who have important duties besides managing), but there are jobs where the most important thing you need to do to please the manager is make sure you don’t do anything that needs the manager’s attention, because they don’t have time to deal with you. Asking the manager for advice in such a case is obviously something to be done rarely and carefully.
I think you could make the argument that a place where the manager doesn’t have time to deal with the people they manage is a poorly managed place. Maybe they need to hire assistant managers or more employees to do the non-managerial work.
That may be true but the argument is of little use for the employee.
It might be useful for the employee in determining they no longer want to work for a poorly managed company.
If they don’t want to. But as an employee, I care about things that influence me directly; if the company is poorly managed to some degree but offers good wages, I still want to work for them, at least until I find something better. Trying to judge the management quality doesn’t seem to be a good employee strategy.
I’ve managed up with a bipolar pizza shop manager by getting myself a notebook and making explicit notes to reference later about how she wants certain cleaning tasks done. It really works.
I’m hopeless if I don’t write things down.
Also, if you write a bunch of stuff down, give it back to your manager to verify. Lots of talking happens. Communication happens better through a document that both people can look at.