One of the themes in Good Boss, Bad Boss, as well as some of my past academic research (see this old chapter on meetings as status contests), is that bosses and other participants use meetings to establish and retain prestige and power. This isn't always dysfunctional; for example, when I studied brainstorming at IDEO, designers gained prestige in the culture by following the brainstorming rules, especially by generating lots of ideas and building on the ideas of others. And when they built a cool prototype in a brainstorm, their colleagues were impressed. The IDEO status contest was remarkably functional because it wasn't an I win-you lose game; everyone who brainstormed well was seen as cool and constructive. In addition, the status game rewarded people who performed IDEO's core work well.
Unfortunately, too many people, especially power-hungry and clueless bosses, use meetings to display and reinforce their "coercive power" over others in ways that undermine both the performance and the dignity of their followers. As I've shown, bosses often don't realize how destructive they are because power often causes people to be more focused on their own needs, less focused on the needs and actions of others,and to act like "the rules don't apply to me."
I was reminded of the dangers of bosshole behavior in meetings by this troubling but instructive note I received the other day. It is a classic case. Note this is the exact text sent me by this unnamed reader, except that I have changed the bosshole's name to Ralph to protect the innocent and the guilty:
I wanted to pass on to you a trick my most recent crappy boss used to use in meetings.
The manager I am thinking of is particularly passive-aggressive and also really arrogant at the same time. He was notorious for sending these ridiculous emails that were so long that no one would read them. (He’s also an engineer in every sense of that word) This was at a technology company and we used to start our Mondays off with a business/technical discussion. These meetings initially took an hour but soon turned into 2 and would regularly go 3 and sometimes 4 hours. It was mostly ‘Ralph’ talking expansively about the issues at hand, about those mother-scratchers in the head office and why we shouldn’t take our challenges back to them (Really? Don’t want to solve anything? Really?). It was just unbelievable, we rarely got anything useful accomplished.
His favorite tricks, though, were pretty much verbatim from your book. He’d arrive 10 – 20 minutes later for almost every meeting and then kill them once in a while. He added an interesting twist to this too. Every so often, if we knew we had work items to cover, we’d forget about the last time and start the meeting without him. Then he’d arrive an hour late without apology, ask what we covered and then make us start the whole meeting again. After all, it couldn’t be a real meeting without ‘Ralph’. And we needed to learn from his vast wealth of experience, didn’t we?
A few questions:
Have you ever seen behavior like this in other places?
If you are a boss, how do you stop yourself from wielding power in dysfunctional ways, and instead, create a functional status contest?
If you boss acts like an overbearing jerk during meetings, how can you fight back?
Had over long meetings-start at 8am supposed to be over in an hour. Started running 2-3 hours.
Scheduled meetings with important customers and vendors at 9am. Told boss and left meeting. Soon all that could (about 50%) would leave after an hour. Soon the meetings were completed in less than one hour. In addition company chairman did not like long meetings. Provided him with minutes and when started and ended and who attended. This also had a positive impact.
Posted by: John Groth | March 06, 2011 at 11:16 AM
I saw that kind of behaviour at a software company I worked for in Dallas. The leaders would always show up later, demand that the meeting be replayed for them, then argue about closed agenda items (or worse still, re-open closed agenda items from prior meetings).
The underlying dynamic was that leadership was out of its depth. The business was in trouble, they were under pressure to "do something" and they were trying to be in too many places at once.
The right answer (which de-personalizes the solution) is to have a strong meeting management culture with a rule that the facilitator CANNOT be the most powerful person in the room. That way, participants can be confident that leaders are not "gaming" the meeting management process for their own ends. I saw this at Xerox Corporation when I worked there for a while, including one meeting where a VP who arrived late was told bluntly by the facilitator that no, he would not get a meeting replay. The VP was not happy, but he could not argue with the facilitator. He had no leg to stand on given the cohesiveness of the process.
Posted by: Graham Shevlin | February 10, 2011 at 03:48 PM
Bob,
I came across your blog kind of by chance after a very frustrating day at the office. I read your posts nearly in tears as it is nearly verbatim my experiences over the last 3 bosses (around 4 years now It seems I can't get away from them?). I am a subscriber and the next click will be to amazon to get your book.
I will reading here daily as this will be my only relief, until.. the economy gets better and I am working on my exit :-)
Thanks, really I mean it thanks
- Gilad
Posted by: Gilad Langer | February 03, 2011 at 03:49 PM
My former boss did the whole arriving late to his own meeting which sometimes lasted 2.5 hours. He'd also leave early and expect us to complete the full meeting as usual. His meetings would be in large groups of unrelated teams, so at any time he's discussing issues with one team that are of little relevance to most of the other teams present. This is justified by his time being too valuable to schedule more meetings with much smaller groups. Also, it gave him the opportunity to embarrass any new recruits in front of a large group of their peers should they make a mistake.
Posted by: Wagdog | January 25, 2011 at 01:35 PM
Dear Bob,
One thing I think we need to do when we have a bosshole in our sphere of influence is to work towoards training them toward constructive meetings. I know this not possible for every bosshole but it is worth the effort. In the case of Ralph's tardiness to meetings and demand that the meeting restart from the beginning I think the implementation of a two-minute drill would be helpful. This could be brought up a team meeting and addressed to the entire team (including Ralph)as a solution to tardiness and staying on track with progress made before the late-comer arrived. In this case a two-minute drill would recap the agenda and quickly summarize the agenda items covered and their resolution thus far. A closing statement inviting one off follow-up after the meeting and a reminder that meeting notes will follow could help ring in the bosshole's distraction. This is just a thought. I believe in being direct and addressing the problem head on. I personally would have a conversation regarding the problem with tardiness with my bosshole.
Thanks,
Ellen
Posted by: Ellen | January 25, 2011 at 11:48 AM
Alright, I'll admit it. I have on occassion been the boss that comes to meetings and lectures for a full hour while my team looks at me completely glassy eyed.
I have found the best way to engage my team is to make everyone responsible for a certain topic or to have them lead the discussion on a certain idea each week. W have also added a "time buster" to make sure we stay on topic and keep our weekly meetings to an hour.
The hardest part of my job is to bring fresh ideas to sales goals that seldom change. The best meetings we have are the ones where everyone shares their ideas (good and bad) and participates. The groupthink mentality is non-productive for everyone.
Posted by: Jenn Weible | January 23, 2011 at 06:17 PM
I'm afraid I am one of many who has had such an experience. At a former job, our weekly meetings were initially run by our team lead. These meetings were casual and social, but still gave us the opportunity to discuss current and upcoming issues as a team. Then our manager, who was rarely in the office and never came to our meetings, decided that we were not focusing enough on our productivity data and were falling behind. This manager then announced that she would be taking over our meetings and showing us our metrics for the previous week.
The new meeting format did make us aware of our productivity, which then steadily got better, but at a cost. We no longer had any opportunity to keep on top of other issues and were unprepared for changes. There was no longer time for individual input or questions, which made me personally feel like I was expected to conform without question, like a robot.
I suppose the moral of the story is that managers need to first be present and aware of how their team functions if they want to be an active leader.
Posted by: Sarah Wheeler | January 23, 2011 at 06:07 PM
For me, the lectures are accompanied with a guilt trip or two during the meeting. Usually when our metrics and performance stats would go down a bit, our boss would sit us down and repeatedly tell us what we did wrong. He would say that we are all adults and should be able to handle it, but we never came out of those types of meetings with out heads held high. He wouldn't act to us in an overbearing way, but sometimes I wondered if there was some power-hungry devil inside of him going: "Look at all the little employees squirm in their seats!". A suggestions would be perhaps isolating the individual problems, having the employees analyze the results, and finally come up with ways to fix or improve them. Indeed, guilt-tripping is not a productive way to hold a team meeting...
Posted by: William Wheeler | January 23, 2011 at 05:00 PM
I have sat in many meetings where the boss did not allow for input other than his own. The only time i was actually able to get input was to start by asking a question and then lead in to a suggestion.
Posted by: Greg Ryan | January 23, 2011 at 04:26 PM
Alright, I'll admit it. I have on occasion been the boss that comes to meetings and lectures for a full hour while my team looks at me completely glassy eyed.
I do find that the best way for me to engage my team is to make everyone responsible for a certain topic or to have them lead the discussion on a certain idea each week. We also have added a "time buster" to make sure we stay on topic and keep our weekly meeting to an hour.
The hardest part of my job is to bring fresh ideas to sales goals that seldom change. The best meetings I have are the ones where everyone shares their ideas (good and bad) and participates. The whole "groupthink" mentality is non-productive for everyone.
Posted by: Jenn Weible | January 22, 2011 at 03:33 PM
To combat some of this behaviour a couple of us published "meeting notes" in the company blog, headed by a summary of the time the meeting started, the time of each arrival, the length of time spent on actual business and secondary summary of the average dollar cost of the meeting based on an average for the attendee's pay scales.
This stopped our manager's weekly reading of the ENTIRE MENU from each place he lunched with the CEO or CIO (I kid you not) and recitation of tee times and scores.
Posted by: Soulvy | January 22, 2011 at 10:17 AM
Sadly, as a result of the bad examples, stasis sets into an organization and into its contributors. Then, as Joseph Wood Krutch so eloquently wrote, "The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at but the moment we are capable of seeing." ...and the blind lead and follow the blind.
Posted by: Randy Bosch | January 21, 2011 at 11:37 AM
I have seen this behavior, yet I have also seen the exact opposite, positive behavior. The most effective leader I have ever had the pleasure of working with was consistent, honest, transparent, respectful, and held himself to the same standards he held his employees to. He was truly a servant leader, and I guarantee he got more out of his people than leaders like the one listed about.
Posted by: Mackenzie Heys | January 18, 2011 at 09:19 PM
For the arriving late issues, we started without the boss, but when the upon flourishy arrival, a takeover was obvious and long. Some of us did other work, some drew, some answered email. Rude? Perhaps but listening to a monologue with very little input is more than rude, it is bosshole behavior. And, I know the boss doesn't realize it (and doesn't care to).
Posted by: HAD | January 18, 2011 at 04:58 PM
My question is did anyone on the team address this boss' bad behavior? If not, why not? We're all culpable in a way for lousy managers if we don't do something about it.
Posted by: Mary Jo Asmus | January 18, 2011 at 04:43 PM
Out of control ego? Happens all too much, Bob.
Posted by: Mike Sporer | January 18, 2011 at 03:22 PM
Ah yes, the arrive-late-full-meeting-stop-bring-me-up-to-speed trick. The passive-aggressive, disrespectful, self-important trifecta.
Common remedy is to just sit around until Mr. Trifecta shows up, then commence, however, this is typically counterplayed by the what-have-you-guys-been-doing-this-whole-time-do-I-have-to-lead-everything putdown.
Posted by: tcoughlin | January 18, 2011 at 11:58 AM