Boss, spying on you?

Regardless of your corporate culture, regardless of your productivity and regardless of your reputation, your boss might want to keep tabs on you. The common stuff is “are you at work during work hours?”, “are you doing actual work while you are [at work]?” and “are you putting-in 40 hours (or whatever has been agreed-upon)?” This might seem petty, because after-all, if you are productive and getting stuff done, why dig into it? There are bigger things to care-about than [bean-counting your work hours] and watching the door. Right?

A few times in my career I’ve had this discussion with folks on my team. Occasionally, I’ll get some push-back from someone. The push-back usually sounds like “Are you spying on me?”, “Why are you scrutinizing me?” or “I thought you trusted me?!”. It makes me feel a little defensive, like as-if I’m maybe overstepping a boundary or maybe violating trust or something (which really does matter to me).

My response is always something like this:

I know you are doing good work. That has never been in-question. If there was a problem, you and I would’ve already talked about it. I’m pleased with your productivity, and anyone who cares about it, already knows you’re doing good. So that isn’t the deal here.

The reason I’m monitoring you, at-all, is because your success matters to me. My job is to get you the visibility that you have earned (in a good way). It is also to buffer you from any doubts. There are no doubts, but that is today, and I feel that is partly because I also have been doing my job.

Career experience has shown me that sometimes, stuff changes. Like: everybody is doing well, but my boss, or his boss, etc will ask questions about my people. Not in an accusitory manner, but you never know.

My job is to be prepared to answer their questions in a way that benefits you. My job is to “have your back”. I can’t “have your back” if I don’t know what you’re doing. If you aren’t doing what my boss thinks you should, then I need to explain why. If I can’t explain, then I don’t have your back, and I’m not doing my job, and my boss will know it. He better.

Beyond that, I “have your back” by making sure you have the resources that you need. Everyone can have a bad-day sometime. I (personally) have even had a bad-week, which sometimes starts heading-towards a bad-month. I’ve had times where I was spinning my wheels, but was too focused on the problem to ask for help. Fortunately, my boss recognized something was wrong, and helped me step-back, regroup and find a new path forward. I learned a lot from experiences like that. My job is also to be that kind of boss to my people. If they get stuck, I don’t micro-manage them, but I need to know when I can/should offer help. I can’t do that if I don’t know my people and I don’t know what it looks-like when they get stuck.

Maybe you think “I never get stuck” or “I’d never get in-over-my-head like that” or maybe “I’m self-aware enough that I’ll snap myself out of it. I don’t need you to do that.” Well, fair-enough. I trust you. I need to expect that you are going to trust me too. If that isn’t happening, then we need to have some different conversations about expectations and how they are being set. I mean that in a 2-way manner. Like what are you expecting from me, and how do I do-my-job differently with you? I still need to get you the recognition that you deserve, and have-your-back. Let’s establish some boundaries so we can both do our jobs effectively.

For most of my colleagues, I didn’t have to get into all-of-that, but for a few, we had several variations of that conversation, but eventually managed to resolve it.