No one wants to be stuck working for a lazy leader or a slacker boss. But there are worse things, and as far as horrible bosses go, there are at least some advantages to having one who leans in the lazy direction. One advantage is that you get to make your mark because they’re too busy sitting back, slacking off, and letting you do your thing.
Unfortunately, there’s also a downside. A lazy boss is likely to make your work suffer, and when your work suffers, it won’t just be your lazy boss who sees it. It will be seen by people outside your team, and it will affect your reputation without anyone knowing that your work didn’t benefit from your manager’s oversight.
So how do you deal with a lazy leader? Here are four coping strategies to help you.
1. Find a Surrogate Manager
Lazy leaders aren’t likely to do the work to delegate effectively, set up work well, or even provide the feedback, coaching, and editing necessary to ensure that your work is of the quality you want. The first thing you need to do to ensure the quality of your work, therefore, is to find a surrogate manager.
Look for other people, maybe one of your peers or someone in another department, a mentor who can take a look at your work and let you know if there are any aspects you’re missing, whether or not it’s compelling, clear, and concise, or make suggestions for additional things you can include in your project. Not only can a mentor help you understand the expectations of your project, but they can also review your work.
2. Stay Strategically Connected
Slacker bosses tend to be non-strategic because being strategic takes energy. A lazy leader doesn’t have the energy to help you understand how your work fits in, why it matters, and why you need to make the decisions you need to make. It can make you feel like you’re working in a vacuum.
If your boss can’t help you stay strategically connected, look for ways to do it yourself by building bridges beyond your existing team. For example, stay connected by joining committees, making connections with project leaders who can help guide you, linking to Slack channels, finding out where the conversations are happening, and using them to help you understand some of the options to make your decisions and your work more effective and strategic for the organization.
3. Establish Work-Life Balance Boundaries
Lazy bosses make you violate your work-life balance boundaries for a variety of reasons. For example, you’re often asked to stay late to meet deadlines or to work weekends to complete projects. Setting boundaries for work-life balance is a particularly difficult and sensitive issue. However, you can’t be expected to do your job and your manager’s job at the same time.
It’s very important to be clear and deliberate about what your boundaries are – first with yourself, and then with your lazy leader. One thing you can do is make a commitment as to how often you are willing to work overtime, communicate that, and stick to it. If you prefer something tangible, you can physically give yourself a pile of poker chips, which is essentially giving your lazy leader a pile of poker chips, and saying no to overtime when you run out of chips.
4. Communicate Your Needs
Slacker leaders often don’t see what you need from them and don’t understand the impact of their lazy behavior on those they manage. However, you can help them see and make sure they understand by communicating your needs.
For example, tell your lazy boss that you need their feedback two days before a deadline, while also being sure to communicate the drawbacks of their failure to provide it. Not only will communicating your needs give you plenty of time to incorporate feedback into a project, but it will also help make the project more thorough, and maybe even more compelling.
Don’t Let Your Lazy Leader Get You Down
As far as toxic leaders go, there are worse bosses than a lazy one. The good news is that with a lazy leader, you have more control over situations than with other types. Of course, it still sucks and it’s not what you deserve, but you can take steps to make sure a lazy boss doesn’t affect the quality of your work. Find a surrogate manager, stay strategically connected to the organization, set boundaries for your work-life balance, and find techniques to help your lazy boss better understand what you want and need—and the consequences of not providing it.
As I mentioned, there are other terrible, horrible, toxic leaders out there, and you may have already dealt with one, or there may be one in your future. What do you think of this one?