How to boss without being bossy

Anybody who says &#x27;I need you to...&#x27; goes on the list, even if they are not actually talking to me myself.<p>But more seriously:<p>Ensure people know what and why something is important, ideally by arriving at that conclusion jointly and as part of an overarching plan that everyone can feel involved in - thus requests shouldn&#x27;t be a surprise, they aren&#x27;t coming from <i>you</i> so much as from <i>the plan</i> (nebulous though it may be).<p>Don&#x27;t try to maintain &#x27;superiority&#x27; by withholding information.<p>Show consideration for other pressures that somebody might be under.<p>Listen when they say no.<p>Close the loop so that good results get back to the person who did the thing.<p>Handle bad results in the same way that the NTSB deals with plane crashes - find the flaws in the system instead of somebody to blame.<p>Be ready to help out others as they have helped out you.

If you&#x27;re looking for the right turn of phrase, you already lost. As a leader, you need to establish a rapport (with someone who is anyway initially inclined to desire rapport with you, because you&#x27;re their boss and have outsize influence over future compensation) and negotiate over high-level context: IC availability and understanding what problems need solving. If everyone understands the problem and there&#x27;s mutual trust, the details take care of themselves.<p>Of course, &quot;establish mutual trust&quot; is a whole megillah unto itself. But if it exists, &quot;take out the trash&quot; is not bossy. If it doesn&#x27;t exist, &quot;could we take out the trash?&quot; is incredibly rude.

Good tech leaders generally don’t command: they inspire.<p>And when you’re at the point where you’re trying to figure out the “right way to say things” you’ve already, utterly, failed.<p>Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and <i>authentic</i>.<p>The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.<p>Spending oceans of time trying to figure out the right turn of phrase is a terrible idea. It’s focusing more on how things look rather than putting the focus on how things <i>are</i> and how things <i>should be.</i><p>Obviously there are oceans of management styles. But I can say that the smooth talking, super considered people who are focused on how exactly to say things rather than bigger picture leadership ideals are typically to worst, most manipulative people I have ever worked with.

I find &#x27;take out the trash&#x27; so much less hsrsher than &#x27;you will take out the trash&#x27;.<p>The first statement permits the response &#x27;no&#x27;. It is clearly an order, with room for agency on the other side.<p>The second statement doesn&#x27;t permit a response. To disagree you have to say &#x27;you are wrong&#x27;. The statement leaves no room for free will. It assumes the authority of the command to be overwhelming. Or perhaps it is a threat.<p>I don&#x27;t mind direct commands from a boss. But a boss that tells me what I will do, might likely find himself wrong.

The author is way too enamored of &quot;I need&quot; or &quot;The trash needs&quot; constructions that are passive-aggressive. I would go nuts if my manager talked to me that way. This is all very subjective, but at a minimum be direct, and polite. There&#x27;s a lot of confusion here between directness and harshness, and it&#x27;s missing perspective on lots of elements of human communication.

Here&#x27;s how my wife does it...<p>&quot;Do you want to take out the trash?&quot;<p>My engineer mind interprets it literally every time :)<p>Usually I don&#x27;t mind taking out the trash... but occasionally I don&#x27;t really want to. I have to always translate this to &quot;She wants me to take out the trash&quot;.

The more trust and respect there is among a group of people, the more direct they can be with each other, without coming off as harsh.<p>There is a lot of implicit communication in a relationship with deep trust and respect at its core. You can say less, very directly, and usually get what you want, without offending anyone.

This is a terrible article that rambles on for far too long without offering an actually polite way to tell&#x2F;request someone to do something.<p>These are the best approaches:<p>1. &quot;Please take out the trash.&quot;<p>2. &quot;The trash needs to be taken out. Can you do it?&quot;<p>3. (If there are several people around). &quot;The trash needs to be taken out. Who can do it?&quot;<p>Extra consideration:<p>I&#x27;m assuming this refers to a context where there&#x27;s a prior agreement in place that A can tell B what to do (e.g. a business, where B signs a contract stating that he has sold X hours&#x2F;day to the organisation). It usually should be unnecessary to bark out orders or to beat around the bush -- both are insulting: if B is a functioning adult they accept that they work for an organisation and so need to complete certain tasks.<p>However, direct instructions are rarely necessary for knowledge workers or highly-skilled professionals. Unless things have broken down horribly, they&#x27;re aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success.<p>E.g., instead of &quot;you will write unit tests today&quot; or &quot;would you mind terribly writing unit tests today?&quot;, A would do best saying something like &quot;we&#x27;re introducing too many regressions when we change things, we need a better testing strategy -- let&#x27;s discuss our approach to unit testing&quot; and then let the team weigh in with their own ideas so they have ownership over whatever is decided.

I&#x27;ve been a team leader and other &quot;management&quot; positions and most of the time, my job is to shield the team from external issues to allow them to do our needed work. It&#x27;s also part of my job to show, by example, dedication to our common goals, even if that means that I&#x27;m there during overnight deployments or other uncomfortable &#x2F; less-than-ideal activities.<p>So I see myself as an equal that has a different role to the others in the team.<p>There are occasions when there&#x27;s something that breaks through that shield and then when I do ask either an individual or the team, they understand that I&#x27;m asking them to do something that I couldn&#x27;t avoid or do myself.

This entire premise is silly. What’s next, how to parent without being parenty? How to direct without being directory? How to conduct without being conducty?<p>If you’re in authority over people pretending that you’re not is just insulting. Just be polite and give commands as are appropriate for your position.

“I need you to …” is too low level. It’s better to set the objective, how success will be measured, and who will care about it (usually a customer or partner), what the stakes are , and when we need to wrap up.<p>If you find yourself as a manager telling people what to do and how to do it, take a step back.

Commanding is a last resort usually. For me the main use is when the team needs for a decision to be made and a debate settled. In a sense I&#x27;m providing a service to the team: I&#x27;m taking the responsibility and blame if things go wrong and removing the need to go around debating in circles.<p>If I&#x27;m giving a command it&#x27;s usually to say confirm some option that other people have suggested and debated like - ok &quot;so Bob we agree that you&#x27;re going to X and Alice will do Y&quot;.<p>At other times I want to make sure something gets done and I cannot do it or have no time to do it so I give the reason why it needs to get done first, e.g. &quot;I&#x27;m worried that the QA&#x27;s don&#x27;t understand it enough to be able to test&quot;, so that the person can tell me if I&#x27;m wrong or if there&#x27;s new information and then I say &quot;could you make sure that the QA&#x27;s know about it?&quot;<p>If you that you explain you can show that your reasoning can be questioned. Someone might say &quot;I don&#x27;t know that area well&quot; or &quot;I&#x27;m under great pressure to do this other thing&quot; or they might say &quot;that isn&#x27;t the way to get what you want&quot;. I find it worth explaining the problem, suggesting solutions and encouraging the other person suggest some - then debating them briefly before making a decision.<p>If you do other things to show an interest in someone and that you care about them a bit then the pill of taking instructions is less. If you can build rapport by finding out what intersts them, get them to talk about themselves - take their HR related requests and other interests seriously. You cannot afford to fake this - you MUST care.<p>I also have to take commands and some are very unreasonable - those are the hard ones to deal with.

This is one way to command, but it isn&#x27;t the best way, because the &quot;best&quot; way depends on the people you command. Some prefer hands-on, others prefer hands-off. Some like very strong decisiveness (&quot;You do this&quot;) while others prefer a more consensus-style approach (&quot;let&#x27;s get opinions on this&quot;).<p>At the end of the day, it comes down to &quot;know your audience&quot;. You&#x27;ll have your own preferred way of leadership, and the people under you will have theirs. Your job is to find a synergy whereby your leadership actions inspire the majority rather than repels them. There will always be some who don&#x27;t like your style, but you can&#x27;t make everyone happy. And there will always be other leaders with opinions on leadership, but they&#x27;re usually talking about their people, not yours. All that matters is: Are you effective in moving your organization, and are the majority whom you lead inspired?

Anyone saying &quot;I need you to...&quot; just makes me think of Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. Doesn&#x27;t come across well at all.

Every team has a way of expressing things. Teams exist in communities that, again, have particular ways of expressing things.<p>In my work environment (in my community) the typical expression is &quot;Could you please&quot;. This is clear and nobody takes offence. More importantly, it invites a response. Perhaps the person is already busy doing something else. Perhaps they lack the skill to accomplish the task. Asking instead of telling provides the boss with useful information, so it&#x27;s about more than politeness.<p>As for the website being discussed, I find the rankings odd. Quite a few of the discussed alternatives don&#x27;t seem harsh to me at all, and I think they deserve 0 stars. Frankly, depending on the circumstance and the community, even those rated the harshest would be perfectly okay. &quot;Don&#x27;t stand there&quot; can save someone from losing a limb in a factory. &quot;Keep your head below the horizon&quot; can keep someone alive. It all depends. And a boss who cannot pick up on how things are communicated in a given team is unlikely to be of much use.

What about “your assignment is” or “you are responsible for” or similar? Surprised not to see them there.<p>The problem with all these is they’re personal. Like it’s what I want you to do.<p>But it’s business. The actual raw communication seems like it should be more like an explanation of how your current role relates to this specific task (ie you have to do it) as well as how other people will be involved, if any.

I feel there are so many more ways this would commonly go down.<p>For instance: &quot;That trash better be gone by the time I get back.&quot; – &quot;Trash. Now.&quot; – &quot;Don&#x27;t forget to do the trash.&quot; .. or, perhaps the ultimate: <i>look at person</i>, <i>point at trash</i>, <i>raise eyebrows and flare nostrils</i>, or maybe that was just <i>my</i> parents.

I have a rule of thumb for determining how difficult it is to be the boss somewhere.<p>Maybe this is obvious, but I&#x27;ve learned it the hard way.<p>Look at the experience of your team and the complexity of the projects. High complexity and low experience cannot be solved with &quot;soft skills&quot; no matter how much the business insists that it can. In that situation you&#x27;re not a bad boss, just at the wrong place. Don&#x27;t let incompetent upper management bully you. That&#x27;s how they&#x27;ve kept their jobs this whole time after all.<p>Nobody would ever think to be &quot;bossy&quot; in the first place if there weren&#x27;t some underlying complexity being misunderstood and&#x2F;or ignored. It&#x27;s not just a matter of investigating this complexity and telling people what to do in a nice way, nor is it a matter of doing it yourself or finding extra resources to pitch in. Often it&#x27;s just completely fucked and they want you to sit on the grenade.

This list excludes the way 80%+ of the commands that the leadership at my company issues tend to be done. Sure, small one-off requests from someone senior might be phrased in some of the ways mentioned in this post. Or, more commonly, something a bit more conversational like “hey can you do X”, or “we need Y by Wednesday, are you up to the task?” But the vast majority of commands from higher up aren’t issued as commands at all. Bosses don’t just tell people what to do next, it’s a collaborative process and a discussion. The team is aligned on our future goals and there’s a degree of self selecting projects to be assigned to, where the things we work on will flow naturally from our project goals. Trying to pick the best wording for what really amounts to opaque non-collaborative decision making from the top just seems like a terrible company culture.

The trick is to remember that your job as the boss is to help your employees do their best work. Once that’s established, the language comes naturally.<p>That said, “can you do X?” usually always works. The answer is almost always yes. If it’s no, there’s probably a good reason why that lets you rethink the request.

My simple take is asking someone to do something should follow two simple rules:<p>1. Give some context. Not a novel. But some understanding of why. Then be direct.<p>2. Don’t all the sudden start insulting them when you ask them to do something. I know, sounds easy, but there are a lot of personalities out there.

I am not a native speaker, but I noticed that in Australia people sometimes replied to the question &quot;Do you mind...?&quot; with &quot;Yes&quot;, actually meaning &quot;No&quot; (they don&#x27;t mind).<p>It happened enough times so that I&#x27;ve asked a few people why they were replying &quot;yes&quot; instead of &quot;no&quot;, to which they couldn&#x27;t give me a clear explanation. This really surprised me at first, but then I understood that the words didn&#x27;t matter as much as the tone of voice.<p>Is that something common in Australia? Or in any other country? Or was that only a non-representative sample that happened to make the same mistake?

This contribute rests on limited and control &amp; command conceptualization and practice of leadership. You can do that. The question is, when&#x2F;where&#x2F;withhwhom is it appropriate and useful.<p>I argue that a leadership practice that is successful in today&#x27;s complex environment is<p>- flexible in style (within the command &amp; control paradigm)<p>- rooted in the trust &amp; inspire paradig<p>The latter is kind of orthogonal to what&#x27;s discussed in the text. I recommend everybody to look into this, particularly those of you who are sitting in a highly complex environment and&#x2F;or who has&#x2F;wants to deal with the next generation of (w.e.i.r.d.) talent.

Box’s “influence over authority” is a good read: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boz.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;influence-over-authority" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boz.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;influence-over-authority</a>

Glad to see this article. It reminds me of a tech lead I once had: very skilled engineer, great guy (we still hang out now, long after I left that job), but we communicated differently. I come from a background where people think they&#x27;re being subtle if they don&#x27;t grab the front of your shirt when they&#x27;re talking. His background must have been very different: we had a problem on a number of occasions where he would ask me to do something, he would leave the conversation with the idea that I had agreed to do the thing, and I was completely unaware that he had even asked.

I like the chart and examples. Thanks! I&#x27;m going to read over theme here in a bit.

This seems a bit superficial, because it concentrates only how you communicate an instruction to people.<p>I suspect, especially in high competence and nominally high trust environments like (much of) tech, mostly when people consider a superior &quot;bossy&quot; it&#x27;s not because of the way they communicate (though that could contribute) but because they do not trust the communication or the motivations behind it, or question why they (the boss) are getting involved at all.<p>To put it another way, if there is a high degree of trust anyway you are likely forgiven a harsher communication style, but if the the trust isn&#x27;t there no amount of wordsmithing that will improve it.<p>That being said, poor communication styles <i>will</i> ruffle feathers and cause problems, and if you are leading people you should learn to do this better. I just don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s at the heart of what being considered &quot;bossy&quot; is, so working on it won&#x27;t likely fix that.

It&#x27;s not about commanding or asking or whatever, you&#x27;re not trying to get Siri to set a timer. It&#x27;s about actual human relationships. Your job as a manager is to help them achieve both their individual goals and your collective goals, in that order. A lot of that is coaching and building alignment, but you also need to tangle with the organization to protect your team. Once you prove to your people that you&#x27;re doing that, you shouldn&#x27;t have trouble talking to them.

&quot;Leaders command people&quot;. No, real leaders don&#x27;t. Those with a military background that have been in situations where shit was all over the fan will agree.

This article is not meaningful without more context.<p>What the boss should say to employees needs to be at a high enough level (eg overarching goals) so that a capable employee can create their own plan to achieve it, but not so high level that the employee cannot see the steps needed to go forward.<p>Ideally this high level goal should push the employee just beyond its capabilities, but the boss knows who to connect with in case they need help.<p>In practice that matters much more than whether you say please or need or can or want.

How to boss correctly :<p>1. be straight with people 2. periodically have a discussion about what the people want and how&#x2F;if your goals are aligned 3. explain how you can help people get their objectives 4. Depending upon complexity, explain perhaps in detail, why a task is aligned<p>Align goals, if doing tasks is in a person&#x27;s best then they will do it. Otherwise there will be friction that helps no one.

I feel like nobody is addressing the fact that I already took out the trash before you even asked. Now <i>that</i> is how to win points with the SO.

I like this approach - with the extra clarity added<p>&quot;The trash needs to be taken out because &lt;x&gt;. Can you look after that &lt;within timeframe&gt;?&quot;<p>Clarity: 5&#x2F;5<p>Harshness: 1&#x2F;5

I’m learning how to delegate these days, and it’s teaching me that I’m a bad communicator. I appreciate the clarity discussion, but in the real world it’s even harder. At least everyone knows what taking out the trash involves! But when it involves delegating a complex task, concerns about being bossy means you might fail to explain the precise requirements of the task you’re delegating.

You need&#x2F;must&#x2F;have to&#x2F;imperative that you do = oppositionality<p>The best boss I had either said: Can You help me out by...x Justification, then command...x The room is really messy, can you...x Please do this...<p>I really agree with the Cialdini&#x27;s method of giving justifications for requests. It works very well for me personally

It starts poorly:<p>&gt; <i>Leaders command people.</i><p>No, that’s administration.<p>Leaders may need to administer, too, but come on, leadership isn’t administration!

Tbh ... what I miss is a honest &quot;please&quot; and a even more honest &quot;thank you&quot;. And all that though our parents said hopefully often &quot;say &#x27;please&#x27; and &#x27;thank you&#x27;&quot;. Honest appreciation is a key which opens many doors and hearts.

This is some low performance team they must be managing. Interrupt-driven task allocation is inherently dysfunctional.<p>In a high performance team, it&#x27;s more like managing a band. The manager is not the talent. You are Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. You enable the talent. You hire smart people, give them goals and the resources they need, then get the fuck out of their way. They don&#x27;t take out the trash. You do it. Or hire a janitor, since it seems you value the task; that&#x27;s someone who didn&#x27;t need asking, because GC is already in their JD.

&gt;Clarity axis<p>That is debatable and part of a fundamental cultural divide between, at a minimum - the USA, the UK and Continental Europe.

Good advice for marriages too!

&quot;Hey, we&#x27;ve got you a new comfy sofa, but can&#x27;t get it in as there&#x27;s trash everywhere&quot;<p>I now <i>I</i> come up with the solution, and execute it too.<p>Why not do it like that? Provide context, making sure people want to do the job to achieve goals.

How to treat people like they&#x27;re people, for robots

Would you kindly take out the trash?

Neuroticising over how to word your commands (polite requests) is slave mindset, and such a person who does this is not a &#x27;leader&#x27;. What makes a leader is not how you word things. But almost nobody walking around in corporate america has an inspiringly authoritative personality, and you can&#x27;t make yourself into one very easily, so retarded articles like this are the best they can do.<p>If you are a leader, then when you simply say &#x27;go do this&#x27;, the follower actually wants to do it and does not care about how carefully you handle their feelings.