How should HR deal with a stubborn boss?

Question:

How should HR deal with a manager who refuses to see the world from other people's perspective? We are talking here about a manager who works at the company, but not the HR professional's direct manager. In other words, a member of management whose stubborn behavior is causing problems within a particular team, and perhaps one whom an employee has raised a complaint about.

Answer:

There is what ideally should happen – and what will realistically happen. And the HR professional has to decide – which they are going to fight for.

A manager who refuses to see the world for another’s perspective – is simply a bad manager. Let’s be clear about this.

What ideally should happen Is coaching – to help that manager be a better manager.

Realistically  – someone who is an adult – who refuses to see things from other’s people’s perspective – probably isn’t going to respond well to coaching.  You have to want to improve what you are doing to actually improve.  And if they have a habit or an attitude – of not listening to constructive feedback – there is really nothing someone who doesn’t have authority over them can do.

Which leaves HR in a quandary. They know they have a manager that isn’t really a good fit for the job, but they don’t have the authority to deal with it.  Which means – to deal with it – they have to get buy in from upper management to work to fix the problem.

Ideally – an HR professional should have a working relationship with upper management to be able to consult on staffing issues – including management staffing decisions.  Ideally, they should be able to use those relationships to point out the staffing problem and suggest ways to fix it – that would then be implemented. Those remedies – would start with coaching and potentially end in the re-assignment to a more appropriate position (that makes use of their expertise – if they have any) or firing of the manager who isn’t doing a good job being a manager if their only skills is – management.

Realistically – most HR professionals don’t have that sort of relationship with upper management. They are not considered trusted partners. They are viewed as paperwork pushers that help make sure staffing accounting is complying with the law and payroll etc and that benefits are being administered.

How can they fix that? By actively talking about these things with upper management. Is that scary? Yes. But there is only one way to get upper management to view you as an equal partner – and that is to act as if you are an equal partner.  Does this carry risk?  Of course, it does. But nothing is going to change – if you don’t change it.

The alternative is to just allow the company to suffer as a result of the bad manager.

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