Working within your circle of influence.

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[Dave]

Aloha Rosa

Bob does not get to utilize his strengths. That is a good point.

My slip on the wording of "try to do the right thing" In what I can gather Bob does do the right thing. This might not be the case in laying it on the line with the boss, but there is no talking to his boss. This guy is the most brilliant manipulator the world has seen. There might be only a handful of people who have his number. To the outside world he is a smooth successful bizman.

Bob is not even sure what values his company stands for. There is a plaque on the wall. It means nothing to Bob. The only person who has seen the corporate side of his world is his boss. This guy shields Bob and the others from corporate and vice-a-versa. As for his boss, he has values. Hitler had values.

Both Bob and I might not understand..

"The gurus, authors, mentors and coaches that have helped me personally in my own struggles as a manager, are those who got me to change my own thinking."

This IS what Bob is insinuating the gurus tell him. The problem lies within himself, he must change his own thinking.

The 8th Habit is to Discover your voice and help others to discover theirs. The process of discovering... is to follow the 7 Habits...which boils down to change your way of thinking, now that I think of it.

I will continue to coach Bob. This seems like something I must just face up to and go on...it has truly been the story of my life.

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I hope members of our community are still with me down here. I need to comment on this remark:

"That is always my goal in my coaching, and why I ask people to please not introduce me as a consultant: I don’t work with you to give you an answer, otherwise you’ll need me around forever. My goal is to help you grow in your own, very self-enabling, intuitively correct thinking: I coach managers to get better at finding their own answers, and then being brave enough to take action on them."

I cannot tell you how refreshing this comment is Rosa! I have seen people in your "line" of work, don't know how else to put it, just stick the IV shunt in and leave it in. Stop by once a month, take a little more blood.

This is one of the reasons I tell people about you and MWA. Folks out there need to know there are people like you who truly want to help...for all the right reasons.

[Rosa]

Ah Dave, there’s the rub, it all comes back to the values-hence-behavior of Bob’s boss not being a match with Bob’s values, and Bob coming to grips with the truth about why he continues to work for the guy at all. What are the handcuffs that shackle him there?

Whether the boss’s values are good values or Hitler-like values is actually not relevant --- the fact of the matter is that Bob and he are not a value-match. Values are like your DNA: short of Bob taking his boss through some radical life-changing experience, his values are not going to change.

Bob’s got to be the one to decide how much longer he’s going to play the sacrificial lamb: he needs to create his own destiny versus just letting stuff happen to him.

Managers (i.e. bosses) have a huge effect on the people they manage --- in a nutshell, that’s the entire underlying wake-up call I wanted Managing with Aloha to make, for there are too many bosses out there like Bob’s who are either clueless about how much they effect people, or they don’t care, and they deserve to have their entire staff stage a mutiny.

However, life isn’t always fair, and unfortunately, good does not always prevail, or as quickly as it should before people get hurt (Hitler comes back to mind). Waiting for Bob's boss's own superior (the clueless leader...) to "see the light," get more involved and/or replace the guy may never happen, especially if he's as smooth a manipulator as you say.

The situation you describe is actually pretty common: “the company” can be far removed from the very people who work for them, under their corporate banner. In a normal day, the worker bee never sees the queen - in fact, he might not get an audience from her in his entire lifetime. For these worker bees, the hive boss IS the hive, and it will remain that way until that boss leaves on his own or gets replaced. Fact of life.

The reality of work is that employees must judge the quality of their job based on the quality of their boss (and his or her values). A big part of that judgment call is if they care about the company itself enough (i.e. their ho‘ohana is a match for the company mission) to, in the words of a popular TV show, outwit, outplay, and outlast that boss. How long are they willing to wait, how much are they willing to sacrifice, and what will it cost them?

If the answers are, “no longer,” “no more,” and “too much” it is time for them to move on. As I see it, they cannot compromise their own personal values if they are to sleep easy at night.

Mahalo nui for your vote of confidence in me Dave, and I truly hope Bob will muster up the bravery he needs to make some good choices for himself.
Rosa