Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Would you like to know how to be likeable and gain the support of your team? Of course you would! But, I’ll bet if you are the manager of a team, you have heard yourself say, “Don’t make me look bad!” even if it was in jest? When those words slip out, it’s an immediate signal you don’t trust or have confidence in team members. And they know it. Today’s Manager Mojo podcast explains what happens when those dreadful words happen, and what you can do to turn that around to gain the trust, respect and support of your team.
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE MANAGER MOJO PODCAST ON iTUNES!
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE MANAGER MOJO PODCAST ON STITCHER RADIO!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT HERE:
Hello and welcome everyone, I’m so glad you’re with me today. And today I want to talk about this statement. What would you think if you heard your manager say, “Don’t make me look bad.”
Now I’ll bet that you’ve heard that before when a manager has either told you or a fellow teammate, “Hey, don’t make me look bad!” And you may have just let it go. Well, I’ve heard it a lot in my career and as a matter of fact I’m surprised at how many times I have heard managers make this statement to their team members. “Hey, don’t make me look bad.”
Now the problem with this is really on a lot of different levels, so I’m going to talk about several of those today. Now, most managers will say this directly to their team member, so what’s really going on when they tell a team member, “Don’t make me look bad”?
The first thing on their mind is that the manager is not confident in themselves. As a matter of fact, their confidence is so low that they’re not sure they’re either training you or your teammate correctly or that the teammate is on the same page as they are. When they feel like that and are motivated that way to begin with, to say, “Hey you might make me look bad” that lack of confidence comes through to the team member. You never want to be in a position where you’re telling a team member to not make you, as the manager, look bad because it sends all of the wrong messages. Not only do they know that you’re not confident in them, they actually begin to distrust you.
Here’s why managers do it, just so you understand. They’re not doing it from a malicious standpoint. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard managers say it and actually laugh about it. I want you to consider that this is not a laughing matter at all because what the manager, in their brain, is thinking, “Look they’re going to go into this environment and they’re going to be dealing with my boss or with other people and I don’t want it making me look bad.” What they think is that they are preparing that team member to do a good job or even thinking that is what coaching is. So they’re coaching them to say, “Hey do a good job. Do it right. Be prepared for it. Do a good job and, oh by the way, I don’t want you to make me look bad. What I really want you to do is to make me look good.” That’s what they’re thinking. They believe that it’s some type of process, it’s a plan, and it’s preparation for that team member to go in the environment where others are going to critique what they’ve done.
And I know that you’ve probably heard that a lot of times before you went into a group meeting. So I hope you’ll begin to think that’s not such a good idea to do that type of thing, because they’re not building that trust in you. They know you’re going to go but they don’t really trust you, and that in itself is not a good place for you to be as a team member to be when you go into a meeting and represent your team, yourself and the manager.
Now that’s an example of before they’ve gone into the meeting. Let me talk for just a second about one that’s even worse. This is after you’ve been to a meeting. I’ll bet you’ve had this situation where you were called in by your manager and you were unloaded on. And the manager says, “I can’t believe you went into that meeting and you said this and you said that and you did this and you did that. You are making me look bad!” Well, how does that strike you?
In the first place, where are they coming from? What was so wrong about being honest about what you said? You should start thinking about that. What you’re looking at in that type of situation is that, “Okay now I’m dealing with somebody that has no clue what actually needs to happen in meetings.” This is really personal for me and I want to share with you a story about how this actually came to play for me.
I had been asked to meet with this high-ranking member of the corporation. This guy had a really big title. I mean he was in the very top of the C-Suite. This guy was making his rounds all over the country and he was going on customer calls with selected people. He wanted to know, “What do our customers think?”
This individual was assigned to me because I had a type of dual role. I had a team but I also had customers that I was responsible for, so it was a type of senior level sales position. It was just the two of us and I took him to one of my contacts. This particular contact was a tough one. I mean he wasn’t a fan of us at that time. So we went, and I told him exactly how we needed to handle the meeting.
I said, “Look I’ll handle the details if you’ll just be the executive and back us up. Let’s do it as a team.” And that’s exactly what happened. We went in and the client absolutely loved it. They thought it was great to bring a high level member of our team in and it gave me some credibility with the customer. It also made the executive look good.
So we’re driving back to the office and the executive says, “Hey Steve, you know that was great but I know there are problems, and I know there are things that are going on. Could you help me understand, what do you see as one of the biggest problems?” So I shared with him a very personal problem. I said, “You know we’re out here and we’re doing our best, but we’re not being backed up in the company. We earn sales, we earn commissions, we earn bonuses, but we’re not getting paid.” And he looked at me and he said, “You’re not getting paid? What do you mean?” So I explained that I was not the only one. There were a number of people who had been pending bonuses for over four months. Now this is a big reputable company and so he was furious. He was like, “What in the world? We’re going to fix this! I didn’t know about this but we’re going to fix this!”
So he goes back to the office and I’m thinking, “Hey cool! I’m finally going to get paid after three or four months. I’m good with that!” I’ve done my good deed. We’ve had a great customer call. I gave him feedback. I honestly answered his questions.
And unknown to me, he goes into my boss’ office and another one two levels above me to meet with both of them. He proceeds to read them the riot act. “Why are we not paying these people? What are you guys doing? Why is this not happening? Blah, blah, blah.” I mean he’s just unloading, “Why have you not told me? Why have we not resolved this? Is this guy right? Is this stuff really happening?” And I’ve got to tell you, when he started on that all of the goodwill that I had done on the customer call went out the window. In my boss’ mind, what I had done is that I’d taken a legitimate problem and I shared it just because I’d been asked to share but what I really had done was I made them look bad. And I didn’t know I was making them look bad. I didn’t think about that part! I mean a problem’s a problem. What’s the big deal? We’re team members, we should be able to talk about problems. Well I was proven that I was totally wrong—that you can’t do that. I was called into the office after the big boss left and I was given the speech,“I can’t believe you did that. Yes we know we haven’t paid you. Yes we know it’s been a problem. We’re trying to get it done. But all you did was make all of us look bad.” And I was just dumbfounded.
I hope you can appreciate that story from the standpoint that number one, these two bosses of mine lost 100% of their credibility at that point because all I did was tell the truth. And the truth sometimes makes people look bad, but that’s okay! That’s just the way it is and unfortunately they were very defensive. And at first because of the dressing down it gave me, it totally disengaged me. It was like, “Yeah I can’t believe this.” But as I began to think about it, I began to understand, “Okay I kind of understand where they’re coming from. They were just embarrassed that they’d not done what they needed to do.” And I have to ask you, who was that really about? Was it about me or was it about them? In reality, it wasn’t about me, that I did something wrong, it was about them. And they were making it about them by being defensive.
You see, when managers do this kind of stuff, this is what happens to us in business. We start getting defensive responses from our team members and that’s not good for you as a leader. You don’t want that at all. And so my point here is that these types of ‘don’t make me look bad’ statements happen in two places — one before, kind of in good humor and one after the fact, where it’s not in such good humor. This is not the way to build a successful team and it’s certainly not the way to get a team member motivated, pumped up and ready to do their job in an exceptional way. My point here is that when people say, “Don’t make me look bad,” yes it’s all about them, it’s not about you and that’s never a good thing.
If you’re a manager and a leader, and you want to be the leader that others want to follow, what you’ve got to do is learn to develop trust. Trust your team member that they’re going to do a great job. They’re going to the best they can. If things don’t work out the way that you hope they will, use it as a learning experience. You don’t want to beat them up over it. What you want to do is to learn how to coach and to lead from a position of strength.
If you’re teaching your people every day, they’re going to learn. They’re going to know that your heart’s in the right place. Because you’re teaching and coaching them, you’re helping them to understand business and things that happen within meetings. They begin to look at you as their leader and the person they can look up to. If they understand what’s going to happen, they will support you. They’ll say—maybe like in my situation, “My bosses are trying to get this done. They just haven’t been able to accomplish that.”
If we’re teaching properly, they would be able to know that. It’s okay if somebody gets upset, because the reality is when we’re teaching and learning we know that people are going to make mistakes. Another great benefit is that when you develop trust, what you’re also doing is creating a reason for them to like you. And when people like you, they trust and understand you, they will defend you. They will make you look great without you doing anything. You don’t have to tell them, “Don’t make me look bad.” They’re going to do everything in their power to make you look good.
And that is an awesome thing! Whenever that happens we know we have developed our Manager Mojo. We’ve developed true leadership mojo. We’ve developed our magic management power so that we have become the leader that others truly do want to follow.
So I hope that the next time you hear that innocent sounding statement, “Hey don’t make me look bad,” that you will think about this discussion and realize that there is a better way.
I want to thank you so very much for joining me today.
