Leadership in Action: Getting to the Roots of Conflict with Your Boss

MIDDLE GROUND

Once you have a better understanding of your boss's expectations and evaluation of your performance, style, and approach and how those expectations compare with your own, you can begin to review how you see your boss and how that perception might be contributing to conflict.

Direct reports generally lean toward one of two extremes in how they view their boss. In the first, the low-conflict extreme, the direct report sees the boss as having indisputable authority. This results in avoiding and minimizing conflict with the boss, promising the boss too much, and caving in to unreasonable demands. On the other end of the spectrum, the high-conflict extreme, the direct report sees the boss's authority as illegitimate or undeserved. This ...