Managing Up

19The Nitpickers and Seagulls

“Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.”

—James Burke

While Nitpickers and Seagulls may not rise to the level of the truly difficult boss from hell, their tendencies to dive in or nitpick can be extremely annoying. Left unchecked or unmanaged, nitpicking and swooping behaviors can demotivate and annoy even the most engaged worker.

The Nitpicker

Nitpickers love to, well, nitpick. Nothing is ever perfect enough. They dive into the most miniscule details. Instead of praising (or even acknowledging) the good parts of your work, they focus on the one error they find. Their attention to detail feels pathological and their red pen is their best friend. They nitpick your choices – “Make that graph blue, not red,” “Use the word ‘cooperate,’ not ‘collaborate,’ ” etc. They deep dive into details that seem to suggest they have too much time on their hands.

 

Real‐Life Story

Jennifer was asked to work on a project for her boss's boss. It was an internal research project that her boss's boss needed for background information. She had clear guidance from the boss's boss, yet her boss kept diving and nitpicking, even after the boss's boss had approved the format. “It was always just little things, like if I made a spreadsheet, he would go through each column and ask for changes to the text size or font or shade of the color. I would think, let me finish the data gathering and then we can ...