One of many sources of conflict of my past boss and I was the conflict of our roles. She had worked at the organization for more than 20 years starting in the role I was currently in and moving all the way up to the position of CEO and President. When I began working there I had done something similar in a previous role and therefore was confident in my ability to do more than just the tasks assigned to me. The conflict occurred when I did not do things the way that she was used to. It was the common case of “multiple ways to do the same thing right”. She felt that because it had been done the way she was doing it for so long that it was the only way and it certainly created conflicted. I also took on tasks above and beyond what was defined in my job description and she interpreted that as me trying to replace her and as she called it “be the boss”. I think that she imagined a source of threat and therefore created conflict.
2 comments:
I wonder if how your boss worked her way up to CEO was by doing what she observed you doing--taking on tasks beyond your job description. When I was elected our department's events coordinator, I did some things the previous coordinators had not done, such as designing a professional pamphlet for COMM Career Day. I wasn't interested in climbing the academic ladder, I just wanted to do the job well. But doing what you think is part of your job might be interpreted as trying to impress others, which is what you experienced with your example.
I'm sure we've all experienced the scenario of what you call "multiple ways of doing the same thing right". It can be frustrating to an employee when the manager believes that there is "no way but the manager's way", when there is clearly more than one way to do the same thing in a correct manner.
Such a conflict is hard to resolve unless the manager changes his or her perspective and realizes that there are many routes to the same goal, and the employee is free to take the route that he or she is most comfortable with. It is not a good idea to mess with an employee's "preferred" way of accomplishing a task because that only stifles creativity in the employee.
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