Ask a Manager’s Alison Green has seen it all.
If you’ve spent any time on the internet over the past decade, you’ve probably seen Alison Green’s work in some form or another. My introduction to her advice column, Ask a Manager, was in 2017 when a man wrote in wondering how to work with his new boss, a woman he dated for three years, lived with, and then ghosted. (This post is not quite “my Roman Empire,” but it comes close.)
As you can imagine, Green’s blogs have a tendency to go viral: Often, she helps people navigate some truly bizarre situations (ie “a coworker stole my spicy food, got sick, and is blaming me”), but regardless of the topic, she never fails to offer practical tips. Over the past 16 years of running Ask a Manager, Green’s read thousands of emails and has a unique view into office culture and worker sentiments.
Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about how stressed-out middle managers are, so we asked Green to offer theories on the root cause, what burned-out bosses can do about this epidemic, and much more.
Katie Couric Media: Tell me about why you first started the blog.
Green: I started Ask a Manager in 2007. At the time, I was the chief of staff for a nonprofit in Washington D.C., and I would see people make decisions that I didn’t think were aligned with the outcomes that they wanted to get for themselves. And I felt like a big cause was that they didn’t have a good grasp of how their managers were thinking. At the time, there wasn’t really anywhere people could go to get work advice on a range of very specific topics. There were plenty of places to learn about writing a resume or negotiating a raise, but where do you go if your question is, What do I do after getting really drunk at the holiday office party? When I first started out, I thought I had maybe six months worth of posts in me, but it turns out that there’s a huge hunger for a resource like this.
Do you think the skills managers need to be successful have changed since 2007, when you started the blog?
I think the skillset has really stayed the same, except that with the increase of remote work, those skills have become even more important than ever. Managing effectively remotely is about doing all the things you always needed to do to be a good manager, but doing them really well. Because if you don’t, the holes are gonna show up much more quickly than they would have.
What are some of the most common complaints you’re hearing both from managers and about managers?
There’s definitely a notable increase in questions like, I have an employee who’s not doing anything, and I don’t know how to prove that. That is 100 percent a result of the move to remote work. I’ve also been getting a lot of questions from managers about how to manage political strife on their team. Some people don’t want to talk about politics at all, other people are crossing lines, and a lot of managers are not prepared to deescalate. That’s been a trend since 2016.
There are lots of complaints about managers micromanaging, or being completely AWOL in terms of attending to employees. I hear people say their managers don’t give them useful feedback at all, or that they’re overly critical. Favoritism, too, is something I get lots of emails about.
Recently, I’ve also been getting lots of emails about how mental health is treated in the workplace. Companies have put more of an emphasis on trying to measure employee wellbeing, and that falls on the manager. [Managers are] told you need to care about your team’s mental health and check in with them, but then often they execute that pretty poorly and it can come off as intrusive. That’s a trend that comes from a good place, but it’s really messing with people at work.
With Gen Z in the workplace now, have you been noticing friction between older managers and younger staff?
Yes. I think that Gen Z is more willing to set boundaries, to say no to working crazy hours, and demand a reasonable work-life balance. Those are all really good things. But it’s common for older generations to bristle at that, and view it as just not how things are done. To say, That’s not how it worked for me, and you need to get with the program and just suck it up.
I think if managers can find a way to get comfortable with Gen Z’s values, which I think are great, they can learn a lot from them. But that is a big source of tension.
There have been some recent companies who’ve flattened their org charts and cut some of their middle managers. Do you think that’s a trend that will catch on?
Middle managers exist for a reason: People can’t effectively manage dozens and dozens of people on their own. You need people who are able to connect with a manageable number of people — usually seven or eight, if they’re going to do it well. If you don’t have that person, all these other problems emerge, maybe not in the first six months but certainly in the long run.
I feel like every five years or so, we see these think pieces about how middle management is on the way out. I remember 10 years ago at Zappos, they introduced this new flat organizational structure called Holacracy, and they ended up throwing that out, because they found that people actually need a manager who has the time and attention to spend on them.
There’s been some research around how middle managers can be especially prone to burnout. Do you think enough is being done to prop them up?
My suspicion is that people seem to be getting less support than they used to. A lot of times, companies will send people off to a two-day training class. Some won’t even do that, they’ll just throw them in and say, “Let me know if you have any questions.” That’s really hard and most managers really struggle for their first year, if not longer.
Learning to manage takes work. I almost think there needs to be an apprenticeship system, or a program where you’re paired with a more senior manager for the first year to coach you through different situations. But often people just get promoted into a management job because they were good at something else: They were good at bookkeeping so they became the manager of all the bookkeepers. But those are two completely different skills.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
