How To Manage Up When My Boss Is Clueless

I'm going to abstract this a little bit to kind of help you understand it, and then we'll kind of bring it back. So when I'm in a dealership, often a service advisor will come up to me and be like, chris, can't believe the day I'm having. I just got dinged on a csi.

Yeah. Got dinged.

And what's my. What's always my answer to that?

Okay, I give up.

So I'll say, what's the customer's name?

Oh, they don't know.

And then I'll say, where do they work?

They don't know.

How many kids do they have?

6.

No, they don't know.

No, they don't know.

What are their biggest fears?

No clue.

No clue. What's their favorite radio station?

Exemplary.

What do they do for fun?

Yeah, they don't know.

No idea.

That's right.

So no personal connection whatsoever. And I've seen twice in my career that in the shop, a technician totaled the car and the service advisor still managed to get 100% on the CSI from the customer. Because they'll forgive us when we make little mistakes.

That's right.

It's just how they feel about us. Right. And so if we know where they work, all that. So now let's role play this same thing. But don't say you don't know, because you do know. I know deep down inside, you know, I pay attention. If you. If you would just connect with that real inner self. I know there's a lot of trauma in the way. I know there's a lot of childhood issues clouding your. Your thinking, but put all. Put all that to the side and, and role play this little scenario with me where, let's say Tommy comes up, you're in a dealership, and he goes, my boss, he's such a. Doesn't know what he's doing. He's completely clueless.

And I say, I say, what. What is, what is your boss's wife's name?

Elizabeth.

No, they don't. In this scenario, they don't know that. Oh, I thought you said that. I. I know you're not very good at this.

Oh, no, continue. I don't know.

Oh, you don't know your boss's wife's name?

Not really.

Okay, what. What is it? What would you say your overall perception of your boss's goal is? Like, what's. What's he really worried about right now?

Leaving at 3 o' clock every day?

Oh, okay.

So you don't know.

Not really.

Yeah.

Sell more cars.

And so do you see that there's a connection here between.

Bad CSI and assuming your boss doesn't know what he's doing?

Yes, now that you put it like that. And it's kind of my fault.

So if I. If I sat with somebody and I said, hey, Christian, you've been doing this for a long time. How'd you get started?

I answered an ad in the newspaper.

And then what?

Then I went in an interview and I told two jokes and got hired. True story.

What were the jokes?

I don't remember. It was a long time ago.

So you suffer from short term memory loss.

I know 24 years ago, it's kind of short term, but I remember the guy laughed pretty hard, and I know his name, and I know his wife's name.

So basically, you are covering up your pain through humor.

Yeah, it's. I believe they call it a defense mechanism.

Yeah. So you're using humor as a defense mechanism. Right now I already know more about you than most people know about their, quote, clueless boss.

That's right.

Okay, so now what if I got to know you a little bit? And I said, hey, you know, I'm. I'm hoping someday to be as successful as you, Christian, and I want to help you get, you know, whatever it is you're trying to get. If I knew what that was.

Is there any chance that you could spend a little time. I'll buy lunch once a week. And will you teach me how to read the financial or will you teach me about sales, or will you teach me about whatever leadership? What would happen in that relationship if. If you asked somebody to mentor you?

Well, they would.

They would get better themselves. But it would also change the dynamic between you and I. Yeah.

I think that when we say people are clueless, that's too simple. We're not really describing what the situation is. What we're. What we're probably meaning to say, if we were telling the truth, if we were really trying to tell the truth, is we would say, I don't understand what my boss's priorities are. I'm aligning my priorities with what I expect their priorities to be. And they're not lining up. And so then it's easy just to dismiss them as being clueless. But the real thing to do there is to learn more, be more of a pest, get them out to lunch, spend time with them, get to know them, and then ask them to mentor or help you. And just like, I remember this too, and I was a lot attendant, I'd pull up cars and Customers were always mad. They were like, oh, I asked for this to be fixed and it didn't get fixed or whatever. And I'm just, I'm like, hey, like I'm just a porter. I brought the car up, but I didn't, you know, let me get the advisor for you. And they go in there and the advisors are all disappeared or busy or whatever. And I, I used to just think like, oh man, these poor customers, these service providers just don't know what they're doing. And then when I became a service advisor and I was woke up from a dead sleep at 2 in the morning because I forgot to park a.

Car out, worst feeling in the world, doesn't it?

Yeah. But what I realized very quickly is it doesn't matter who, who it is. If you're writing 25 customers every day and half of them are holdovers because the shop's backed up. It wasn't the service advisors, it was the situation. And so it's probably not that your boss is clueless, it's that you're not on the same page and you haven't asked enough question or tried to understand what your boss is trying to do.

Well, and the boss might have a, an incorrect assumption of what matters to you. Right. They might think the exact same thing of you because on both sides you don't know each other. But like, let's say that you're in the department and it's, you got bad surveys, you're not making any money, the GM or the boss may be assuming that you don't care about that stuff, even though it's far from the truth in a lot of cases. Right. Like the two in the morning thing is real. The coming in at 6 in the morning and going home at 7 o' clock thing is real. But if you're not communicating with your manager, that goes both directions on the assumptions. They fill in blanks too.

Yeah, they're human. So they like people to show interest. They, you know, they like you to saddle up and try to help them achieve their goals. But you're seeing it through your, through your lens, through your eyes only. So the secret there is to get to know them, get to understand them, not judge and be an asset. And every great leader, I think served at one point, you got to be just as good at making your boss perform at a higher level.

Then you'll be, you know, then you'll be, you're going to be a good leader or not be a good leader. But if you can't serve, then you're not going to be able to lead. That's been my experience.

I've seen service managers where they say, I want to make my GM look good. It happens a lot in group settings where they do that. Like, is that really. You have to ask yourself, is that one of your goals? Are you trying to make your boss look good? Are you trying to make yourself look good?

Yeah, that's a. That's pretty profound. So there you go, everybody. Couple examples. I abstracted it for you and then brought it back. But whenever you catch yourself saying they're more on, they're clueless. If I walked up to you and I said, hey, what's their wife's name? What are their. What are their goals? What are their fears? And you don't know. Stop judging and start learning. You learn way more by shutting up.

Zip it. I like it.

Unless you're asking questions.

And you could. I suppose if you ask a ton of questions, you could find out they really are a moron. But it's probably not as often as you might think.

Yeah, they're. Most of the time it's not by accident. They're where they are. Yeah.

They don't pull names out of a hat for that position.

Exactly. Cool. Well, thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We'll see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

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