Managing up

You describe him as a friend, but also as an acquaintance.

Are you guys friends or do you just know him and occasionally interact? Do you have the kind of relationship where you can sit down and have a hard talk where your honesty and desire to see him succeed will be accepted and appreciated?

Is it really any of your business or are you crossing a boundary if you get involved?

There's not really enough information to know exactly how to advise you on this one. The one thing I do know for sure is that you have to put a stop to people who work under him complaining to you. If they have legitimate concerns then they need to address them to the apporpriate people. If they are just venting and you are truly his friend then you don't need to allow yourself to be put in that position.

 

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Go to his manager and have a conversation. If he's a crap manager, you all will suffer, especially if your department comes under scrutiny. In the words of the Godfather, it's not personal, it's business.

 

I've been in a similar situation, and it never got resolved.

I had been working for the company for about 4 years at this point. This was doing touring family arena shows. Our department included a head and five assistants. The head, who was good, was leaving to go to another show. So they had to promote one of the assistants up into the head position.

The choice came down to myself and one other guy. My qualifications were that I could fix any piece of equipment we owned, could program the control consoles, and had detailed system of records for everything. His qualifications were that he had been there longer than me, and he was friendly with management. He could do some basic repairs and kind of knew how to run the show on the controls. He really wasn't that good at anything.

He got the promotion. Why, I'll never know. I can only assume it's because he was a better schmoozer. Immediately, things went downhill. It didn't matter what issue popped up, he just sat at his workbox playing on his computer and watching porn (yes, really). I dealt with everything. Something not working 15 minutes before showtime, and I was busy on another project? He'd sit there and tell me to go fix the other thing afterwards. The rest of the crew couldn't stand him, either. But, it was what it was. Luckily, the rest of us banded together to make sure the work got done that needed to get done.

What's even funnier, I worked with someone a couple of years ago, and found out he had worked for the same company with this same guy about 15 years earlier. He then went off into a tirade of expletives remembering him. So it wasn't just me!

But yeah, seeing the wrong person getting into a managerial position really sucks. And it sucks even more if you are on the team under his watch. As far as advice, it's hard to say...saying something could create some really bad blood in the place, or it could fix everything. Who knows?