When Your Supervisor Is Disciplined

Most of us have supervisors, including those of us who believe we don't have supervisors. But that's a story for another time. This story is a cautionary tale for those who believe they aren't personally at risk when their supervisors are disciplined for transgressions of some kind. After all, some believe, it's the supervisor who's in the soup, not the supervisee.

The good news is that if you deal with your supervisor's situation as it is, you can manage the risks. The bad news is that the situation can be complicated, as the following example scenario may show.

An example scenario

Late Tuesday afternoon, as Danielle's supervisor was passing by her door, he leaned in and said, "Let's have a quick check-in about Marigold tomorrow at 9:30. My office?" Danielle looked up and replied, "Sure, Chief." He liked people to call him Chief, even though he was just a line manager, and no more a chief of anything than anyone else in the office.

On Wednesday morning, the "check in" turned out to be Danielle's performance review. Chief was well prepared. He had a bill of particulars, including six or eight of the top ten things that had gone wrong with Marigold. More than half of them occurred before he had assigned Marigold to Danielle. And he seemed to expect her to have no answers for any of the charges he was making about her lack of initiative, her failure to motivate the team, her failure to address the project's architectural flaws, and a number of other sins. Danielle listened. She didn't say much, and Chief wasn't really asking for her participation.

It was an ambush play, a play in which Danielle didn't really have a speaking part. All she was expected to do was sign the three-page document Chief had prepared. She asked for some time to study it, and Chief said, "Fine, Friday noon then?"

"OK," she said, and went back to her office, stunned. Danielle never found out how it happened, but HR somehow heard about the incident within a day. On Thursday, mid-afternoon, Chief called Danielle and "invited" her to his office for another "check-in." This one was different. He apologized in some detail for the Tuesday meeting, saying he had been out of line and that the situation had been clarified for him. Her performance review had been rescheduled for next month, and further information about it would be coming from Human Resources.

Clearly someone had had a chat with the Chief. Danielle was very relieved.

Subordinates of disciplined supervisors might be at risk

Although Danielle's immediate career risk might seem to have been addressed, some longer-term risk remains. Below are four examples of those risks.

The organization bears significant responsibility

Chief's approach to the performance review is so problematic that one must presume that the organization bears substantial responsibility for the transgressions he committed. For example, any guidance or training he received about performance reviews was clearly defective. It either omitted the basics of reviewing employee performance, or the review process failed to deter bad actors — it failed to manage the risks presented by the pathological reviewer. If Chief didn't receive appropriate guidance or training, or he wasn't subjected to appropriate screening, then those omissions might themselves be organizational defects.

Chastened managers sometimes seek revenge

Although a subordinate's short-term
career risks might seem to be addressed
by disciplining the supervisor, some
longer-term career risks remain

Being compelled to deliver an apology can be a painful experience, especially for someone who prefers to be addressed as "Chief" instead of being addressed by his name. We don't know what Chief was told about the Danielle incident, nor why he was told to apologize or for what. But it's reasonable to suppose that in a significant share of similar cases, the perpetrator might conclude that their target "went running to HR" to demand that the perpetrator be disciplined.

Supervisors who convince themselves that their subordinates took such steps might also be able to convince themselves that they, not their subordinates, are the injured parties. Such perpetrators are then more likely to take further "defensive" actions against their subordinates. Revenge remains a possibility. That's one important reason why their subordinates remain at risk even after the perpetrator has been disciplined.

Chastened managers need close supervision

To ensure that perpetrators don't commit further infractions, long-term remediation is required. Retraining and close monitoring are needed to perfect organizational processes and to prevent further harm to employees. In some cases, perpetrators must be terminated.

Perpetrator can be confused with uninvolved subordinate

When the perpetrator's transgression didn't involve Subordinate A, and Subordinate A didn't report the transgression to authorities, those investigating the transgression might tend to assume that Subordinate A collaborated with the perpetrator, or at least knew of the transgression and elected to remain silent to protect the perpetrator.

In these cases, the probability of discipline extending to the uninvolved Subordinate A is appreciable. But reporting transgressions committed by your supervisor is risky business. The wise course is to regard supervisor transgressions against others as early warnings of danger to yourself, and then to prepare to respond.

Risk management for the targeted subordinate

As the targeted subordinate, unless you have confidence that the organization will take remedial action promptly, you must accept that both the organization and the perpetrator might regard leaving you in place as a threat to their own safety.

Here are three strategies that can provide risk management for targets.

Find a different supervisor in the same organization

This option carries two significant risks. First, if Chief discovers that Danielle is seeking a transfer, he might try to prevent her from finding one. He might be motivated by pique, or revenge, or his need for her contributions. Second, to the extent that the organization is responsible for the performance review incident, changing supervisors might not provide Danielle much protection. She would still be working in the organization that had entrusted her career development to the likes of Chief.

Find another organization to work in

A change more radical than finding a different supervisor is the option of seeking another position elsewhere in the enterprise. This can be difficult for people whose contributions are specifically matched to small organizational elements. So, for example, a CRM software specialist might be less mobile than a line manager. These limitations can be resolved by seeking employment in another enterprise.

Document incidents of management malpractice

If Chief has transgressed once, the probability of a future transgression is elevated. But next time, he'll likely be cleverer. Be prepared. Begin keeping a log of all incidents that could substantiate any future claim by you of management malpractice. You might not believe yet that making such a claim would ever be necessary, but waiting for the necessary to become the obvious only forecloses opportunities to develop a powerful counterattack.

Last words

Consider working with a coach. For solving complex career problems, coaches have some significant advantages. First, because coaches aren't personally involved, they can think more clearly than their clients about the options. More important, though, they've seen more examples of similar situations than the individuals in those situations have seen. Compared to those individuals, coaches are therefore familiar with more options for dealing with complex situations. Look for experience, inventiveness, and rapport.  Top    Next Issue

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