The Mouthy Manager

“It is not so simple to know when to speak and when to listen”.

Recently a friend told me about a problem at work where her manager jumped to conclusions in a meeting thinking she knew what the problem was, and further messed up the situation.

Basically the person didn’t know when to shut her mouth, and since that person was the manager, no one could say to her, Shut up!

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

I laughed when she explained her situation, because I have had the same problem with some of my bosses, and I have created these problems being the boss 😊… I think the worst thing is that there are many situations where I am not aware of the mess I created.

Being a manager requires some skills and above all it requires energy. It takes quite a lot of energy to listen to people’s problems. Let’s face it, usually, as a manager, people come to you with problems. If they have the solutions, why would they come to you except for checking the box?  And problems suck energy. In the same way, solving problems gives you energy (and sometimes relief).

In any case, all problems add to your workload and energy level. And when the agenda is packed with meetings and different kinds of problems, managers have to go into execution mode by default. They are running from meeting to meeting and need to get things done. They are expending energy and they need energy.

Managers tend to solve the problem themselves… because they think they know best, they can relate it to that work they used to do and they ‘know’ the solution… and in the process, they forget something important that should be present every time a manager opens his or her mouth: the iceberg of ignorance.

In 1989, Sidney Yoshida explained perfectly in his ‘iceberg of ignorance’ how the higher you go up in the organisation, the less visible the problems of the company become. And it is logical that problems are solved at the right level where they need to be solved, but at the same time there is an implicit risk in understanding the problem in its entirety or, even worse, not being aware of the right problem.

As a manager, you only see a fraction of the problems, still, you need to abstract the problem and reduce it to something understandable at your level, but in that process, you may forget, you may summarise too much, or even worse, you don’t even understand, the amount of work required to do the work and the amount of things/stakeholders involved in that work.

Listening is very difficult, because it can pile up more problems in your ‘problem tray’. Also, we have a preference for listening to ourselves. (Some people more than others), as our ego and defence system needs to give reassurance to ourselves😊.

But if you have competent people and are aware of the iceberg of ignorance, as a manager, it may be better to keep your mouth shut most of the time. Let the team present the problem and their solution. They may need to be challenged, because they may not have other points of view that can provide alternative solutions to the problem, but they should be the ones listened to.