In Good Working Order

Overfunctioning 101

Dan Savage, in his podcast Savage Love, often suggests we should be “in good working order” before looking for a relationship. And we should expect those we are dating to also be in good working order.

Good working order does not mean you don’t have issues, emotional baggage or neuroses. It just means that you know what they are, accept responsibility for them, ask for what you need to mitigate their impact and work to manage them. You keep your dogs on a leash, as I wrote in a recent substack.

Last week, a friend of mine who is also an executive coach sent me an article from the Harvard Business Review called How to Manage An Insecure Leader – Three steps for dealing with anxious or avoidant executives by Jeffrey Yip and Driton Gruda.

The article describes the challenges of working for bosses with one of those attachment styles, and does, indeed, offer three steps to “deal with” them. While much of the information is useful, I want to call out the problematic premise underlying the article.

By focusing on how employees can more effectively “manage up” by doing the emotional work the leaders lack the interest or capacity to do, we imply it is fine for leaders to not be in good working order.

Not only is it acceptable for the leaders to opt out of the basic adult task of regulating their emotions appropriately, but it is also the job of the employees to do it for them.

No.

Just no.

Given that most leaders are white, and most of those white people are men, this exacerbates the impact of the assumption underlying this article, which, shocker, appears to be written by two men.

Do we really need a recipe for how to overfunction to mitigate the emotional immaturity of leaders who apparently feel no responsibility to show up as adults in the workplace?

While I wish the authors had called out the damage of these underlying assumptions, there are some tactics in this article which might prove useful if you are in the specific antechamber of hell where you work for a leader who can’t regulate themselves. I have worked with and for this kind of boss, and coached plenty of clients through this particular challenge and I’ve used the tactics outlined in this article frequently.

Attachment styles

Attachments styles have gotten lots of attention over the last couple of decades and people find the framework useful. I am familiar with attachment styles, and treat them with the same provisional respect and curiosity I treat other personality assessments like MBDI, the Enneagram and horoscopes.

I take what is useful but I’m not building my life or extensive frameworks of understanding on them. Attachment styles are a guide, not an excuse for bad behavior. It is just a description of an operating system that can be dealt with skillfully or unskillfully.

What are the styles and what do they do?

The article says that leaders who are insecurely attached will, under pressure, be besieged by doubts and fear. “They may micromanage, emotionally withdraw, resist feedback or seek excessive praise.”

The authors go on to describe two types of insecurely attached leaders, anxious and avoidant.

“Anxious leaders crave an affirming, constant and often unrealistic connection, lighting up with praise but spiraling when they feel excluded or criticized.” They can be charismatic and inspiring, or clingy and paranoid, often pulling their co-workers about on a roller coaster ride of their own dysfunction.

Avoidant leaders seem stable, but “beneath that surface is a discomfort with vulnerability that keeps them distant and hard to reach…They may shut down when challenged or become hypervigilant when the stakes are high.”

The tools the authors suggest are what they call the 3R Process. I call it Overfunctioning 101.

1. Regulate. First, they suggest you should regulate your dysregulated boss’ nervous system. “An anxious leader may need soothing non-verbal signals” like a calm and confident tone of voice.

2. Relate. Then you should make them feel like you’re on their side by catering to their style. The authors suggest you continue to regulate them by physical proximity, eye contact and, still, the soothing tone.

3. Reason. Once you have emotionally regulated them you can reason with them, as long as you couch your statements in ways which will not make them uncomfortable. For avoidant types you must “(b)uild arguments systematically and dispassionately. Clear logic and empirical evidence are key.”

If bending ourselves into overfunctioning pretzels, while simultaneously tone policing ourselves was effective, it would be one thing. I’ve tried to reason with bad bosses and no amount of Rs are going to get them to listen to let alone accept hard truths.

“Attempting to confront an insecure leader’s behavior head-on can backfire,” the authors write.

The cost to a person who adopts this as a way of working is not insignificant, especially if that person is a member of a marginalized community or already subjected to racism or sexism at work.

As a woman, I was conditioned to take care of the emotions of everyone around me, especially men. Since most of my bosses were white men, I did it often. I have regulated, related and reasoned like a pro. It has taken me years to unlearn.

When I was in my late twenties and being sexually harassed at work I was told to tell the men who were harassing me that they were “making me uncomfortable.” By appealing to their desire to protect me as a young woman, I was told, I was more likely to get them to stop than if I called them out on the harassment. I tried it. It didn’t work for shit. Naming it, calling it out, telling HR, well, that didn’t always work either, but it did get me more than one legal settlement.

It’s hard to do your best work when you have to spend so much of your energy on the hypervigilance and management of emotionally immature leaders who, let’s face it, have power over you. It’s even worse if you have a trauma history.

It is almost impossible to simultaneously manage a boss’ emotions and get them to listen to hard truths, new information or innovative solutions. But this approach is not about holding leaders to metrics around success, team efficiency or any ethics or values. It is almost exclusively about managing their emotions, so they won’t hurt you or anyone else while trying to get them to do what you want.

I understand this is the reality for many people at work. Just as it is the reality for people in relationships built on coercive control or domestic violence. Knowing how to keep yourself safe by understanding how not to provoke your abuser is useful. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is abusive behavior.

Here’s the reality that won’t get published in HBR: if you are in leadership it is your job to make sure you are in good working order. Which might mean coaching, therapy or other ways of facing your shadow side.

It is the leader’s job to understand the styles and preferences of the team to create a supportive and healthy workplace where people can get their work done without the hypervigilance or emotional energy required to do the of epic overfunctioning described in this article.

The authors do acknowledge in passing that this approach can work for any co-worker, including direct reports, and is a more effective frame for managers to use than labelling someone difficult or too emotional.

But my concern is that this article, like most corporate cultures, is built upon the fact that we don’t expect or require leaders to show up in good working order. Then it becomes the job of the people who have less power, who work for them, who may not have the privilege they have, to twist themselves into emotional pretzels – with eye contact, a calm tone and physical proximity – to keep their bosses from acting like toddlers.

No.
Just no.