Straight Truth: My Boss Isn’t Supporting Me

Ethan Evans

and

Jason Yoong

May 17, 2023

What do you do when you join a new company and your boss will not support you in getting to know your remote peers?

How do you earn support from a new manager in general?

A reader asked:

“I joined a new company six months ago and work in a global team. In my last review, I got feedback that other leaders didn’t know who I was and what am I doing. So, I am taking steps to increase my visibility — reaching out, helping solve problems, speaking up in meetings, expressing a desire to travel, etc."
However, this isn’t enough. Building headway in a space where connections are already formed in a remote setting is tough. Though I have expressed a desire to travel, my boss has sighted budget constraints. The problem is when any avenues for global travel open up, my boss plans his own trip.
How can I increase my visibility beyond one-to-one conversations with global leaders when travel is not an option?
Should I or should I not discuss this with my skip-level?”

This reader also relayed other circumstances where the manager is not supportive that I have omitted for length.

My advice:

Publish your work. Nothing can stop you from creating an informative status that you send to all of those leaders on a regular basis. Frequent and short is best; do not wait until you have “big news.”
Look around (or ask around) for other directs who are having more success. What are they doing? Mimic them!
Try to earn trust / add value before asking for more support. Ask your boss how you can help them. After you help them, ask if they can help you integrate, including travel.
Seek to add value / help out the people you need to meet. People help those who help them. To learn how to do this effectively, read my article The Magic Loop
A framework for rapid career growth (it worked for me, my directs, and mentees).
Escalating to a skip level with a problem almost never works. They have a choice — listen to you and accept that they have a problem with their direct report (a big problem for them), or deny what you say and possibly also tell your manager what you said (easy for them). The risk is high and the chance of help is low. This is one of those unpleasant “straight truths.” Unless you have a close relationship with the skip, I would not try this.

If none of this works after 3 to 6 months, you may have a bad boss and need to consider a change.

I wrote a follow-up post on how to find a great manager.

Audience Insights

As will be the case with all posts in this series, I first post my answer, above, on LinkedIn, and then my audience comments. I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering, including:

Have a clear, direct conversation about feeling unsupported integrating into the new company. An effective approach is to own the situation (be vocally self-critical about what you did not act on), give examples of actions you tried, and then ask your manager for advice.
I suggest timing the conversation after a “win”. Remember, people help those who help them. Help your manager and then make the ask.
Get a clear understanding of what “more visibility” looks like as it may differ by leader (e.g. owning a Weekly Business Review section, speaking up in meetings, teaching a Subject Matter Expert class, being called out by that leader’s team in a meeting or report, etc).
Get a clear answer on the expectations of your work output and impact. It may be the case that your manager is hesitant to increase your visibility to other leaders because the work results are not up to par.
Build a relationship with your skip level manager before you need it. That way, if you do ever need to escalate something you have a much better chance of really being heard.
Keep in mind there can be a lot of context that explains things that the manager is doing. There are always two sides to the coin. Seek to gather information by first earning trust / adding value with your manager.
It was suggested, and I agree, that the deepest relationships are built by shared work, not by quick chats, whether in person or remotely. So, if you want to build a relationship with someone, strive to share a project with them.
Further, take into consideration the culture of your coworkers. In some countries, in-person contact to build relationships is more necessary than others. I am no expert on this myself, but it makes sense that it could be true.
It can be challenging to connect with people in a remote setting, on the flip side, it may create a hunger in some for more connection (an opportunity). Carefully observe how people interact in meetings and lean on your peers to understand the company culture to pinpoint how you can engage in quick (e.g. 2min chit-chat at the start of a meeting, kudos shoutout in Slack) and deeper (e.g. 30 minute 1:1 meeting) remote relationship building.
Take this a step further and when someone helps you (e.g. onboarding buddy, introduces to stakeholders, pulls you into a meeting for exposure), close the loop with that person and tell them what you learned, what you did, and ask how you can help them. Most people fail on closing the loop.

Submit Your “Straight Truth” Question and Vote

Click here to submit your question or vote on questions you want me to answer.

To see if I have already addressed your concern, please look at past issues of this newsletter - you may find what you need!

On-demand Leadership Development Courses

I have built courses to help leaders grow. Popular courses include:

Level Up: Breaking Through to Executive: Covers the specific standards by which executives are selected and how to manage your promotion process to show you meet them.
Managing Up Successfully: Gives specific steps to create effective relationships with your boss and senior peers.

Click here to see my courses.