Do You Tell Your Staff When You Disagree With the Boss’s Orders?

Last week I wrote about how managers who are excluded from decision making that affects their work can try
to get included and make their views known to senior executives. But what should they do when their bosses
insist that they implement decisions the managers disagree with?

Should they present a united front with senior executives and stay tight-lipped in front of subordinates in an
effort to rally their staff’s support? Or should they make their views known to those who report to them, while
acknowledging that they have to go along with their boss’s decision?

Traditionally managers have been expected to follow the former course. They have been told that they should
serve as mouthpieces for their bosses and avoid voicing any dissent about a corporate decision they have
been asked to implement. And they have been warned that following that approach may stir discontent and
opposition among subordinates.

But a new breed of executives, many of whom have weathered mergers and other upheavals that have
required them to carry out difficult directives, believe frankness is the best policy.

"No manager is ever going to agree with every decision senior management makes," says Douglas Emond,
senior vice president and chief technology officer of Eastern Bank, Lynn, Mass. And employees can usually
discern when their bosses disagree with their bosses, and they will respect managers more if the managers
acknowledge their opinions while still motivating their staffs to implement the decision, Mr. Emond believes.
"The key is to know why senior management wants you to do what it asks, to understand its thought
process, and to be able to convey that to subordinates," he adds.

Mr. Emond has held management posts in the U.S. and overseas at a half dozen financial service and other
companies. With each move, he has taken on new challenges and learned to trust his own thinking, he says.
"As a manager, you’re not paid to agree with everything your bosses decide, but to perform tasks."

Four years ago he was chief operating officer and chief technology officer at BankBoston when Fleet
Financial acquired it. While many BankBoston senior executives quickly headed for the door, he stayed on
and became a member of the merger integration team. His responsibility was to integrate eight businesses
at the two companies, helping to decide strategy and a new management team while also cutting staff.

When he disagreed with a decision about which senior executive would oversee one particular business and
what the business’s future strategy would be, Mr. Emond decided that he wasn’t going to hide his views. "I
told them I was given orders, and this is the way it’s going to go," he says. His frankness, he believes,
"better prepared people to handle what was coming" and also won him the trust and support of his
management staff, which was involved in the tough task of cutting about 50% of the staff.

Mr. Emond ties his willingness to be frank with employees to a leadership lesson he learned from his father,
also a banker. When his father learned that a hard-working subordinate had lied on his job application about
graduating from college, "instead of firing him, he took the employee aside and asked him, ‘what is it going to
take for you to get that degree,’ " Mr. Emond says. "My father believed in doing the right thing, and he taught
me that being a leader means being true to yourself and to your people."

Laurie Spoon, vice president of corporate communications and investor relations at software-maker Selectica
Inc. in San Jose, Calif., says that when she is handed a decision she doesn’t agree with, she always asks
the company’s chief executive and chief financial officer, "what’s the reason for this? Sometimes they tell me
something I didn’t know, so I can explain the issues behind the decision to my staff," she says.

She also asks her bosses for help when they ask her to implement a tough task. Recently, when she and
her staff were asked to put together the company’s annual report in 10 days, she told the CEO and chief
financial officer that they would have to be available to help her plan content. "We sat together in a room and
wrote the open letter to stakeholders, whereas if we had more time we would have gone back and forth with
drafts," she says.

Meanwhile, a designer on her staff suggested that adding a pocket to the back of the report for business
cards would allow it to be used by the company’s sales team, serving two purposes. "I encourage my staff to
make adjustments to decisions they’re handed, in order to make them better," she says.

E-mail comments to [email protected]. To see other recent columns, go to CareerJournal.com.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,in_the_lead,00.html