Dealing with an Unorganized Boss III

Bosses who don’t communicate

Many managers with no previous leadership experience are poor communicators.  This isn’t surprising because the communication skills required to be a good manager are generally only learned through experience.

One common situation you’ll find yourself encountering under this type of person is working on a team of people who are out of sync. For example, your boss may tell you about an important upcoming project, but no one else hears about it until the last minute.  On the other hand, you may also find yourself in a position where everyone else knows some crucial piece of information except you.

The best solution is for your boss to learn how to communicate as a
leader.  You can try to encourage them to communicate better by
suggesting weekly meetings, memos to the whole team, etc.  However if
you can’t change your boss, here are some things that might help
improve the situation.

• Create a group email address for the whole team.  Sometimes by giving
  your boss a mechanism to communicate with everyone just as simply as
  communicating with an individual will help improve the communication.
• Notify everyone on your team of critical information.  Don’t assume
  that your boss will tell people what they need to know.  This can be a
  simple matter of summarizing what your boss has told you and emailing
  it to the entire team including your boss.  Your boss then has an
  opportunity to clarify themselves if you misunderstood something or
  they changed their mind.
• Create informal weekly meetings with your coworkers to go over anything
  important.  Obviously it is better if your boss is driving these, but
  even if it is just you and a few co-workers, a few minutes spent
  communicating can save you hours of work later on.

Other posts on dealing with an unorganized boss:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3