| > My personal favorite, combo of 2 listed, would he "I need X to happen" I had a boss who spoke like this: He was too afraid to communicate directly, so everything was implied. Instead of saying "I'm assigning X task to you" we'd have to play a game where he'd say "X is really important and it needs to be done". Then you had to ask 20 questions to extract the actual ask from him: "Okay great, should I do it" "If you want, that would be great" "Cool, I can do it. Is it the highest priority or can it wait?" "Well it's very important, but I don't want to interfere with your other work." "I'm working on task A with tasks B and C next in the queue. Where should I prioritize it?" "Well it's very important. The stakeholders want it done soon." "Okay, how soon? Is there a deadline?" "I don't like to put deadlines on people, but they're very adamant that it gets done soon. It would be good if it was done soon" And so on, until I had spent 15 minutes extracting enough clues about what he wanted. He thought he was being extra nice by never giving anything resembling an order, but it just created confusion for everyone and disappointment when we didn't perfectly read his mind. |
Anyone at the end of the days it’s literally their role to handle the dysfunction and/or understand the products