【正文】 ey know to be a poor decision. These managers will agree with the boss even when a disagreement might be wele or when the boss would easily alter a decision if given more information. Because they bear no relationship to the specific situation at hand, their responses are as much an overreaction as those of counterdependent managers. Instead of seeing the boss as an enemy, these people deny their anger the other extreme and tend to see the boss as if he or she were an allwise parent who should know best, should take responsibility for their careers, train them in all they need to know, and protect them from overly ambitious peers.Both counterdependence and overdependence lead managers to hold unrealistic views of what a boss is. Both views ignore that bosses, like everyone else, are imperfect and fallible. They don39。s decisions. Sometimes a person will escalate a conflict beyond what is appropriate. Seeing the boss almost as an institutional enemy, this type of manager will often, without being conscious of it, fight with the boss just for the sake of fighting. The subordinate39。s instinctive reaction under these circumstances is to resent the boss39。s assumptions. His boss in turn would bee even more adamant about holding his original position. Predictably, this escalating cycle resulted in the subordinate avoiding whenever possible any topic of potential conflict with his boss.In discussing this problem with his peers, the manager discovered that his reaction to the boss was typical of how he generally reacted to counterarguments but with a difference. His response would overwhelm his peers but not his boss. Because his attempts to discuss this problem with his boss were unsuccessful, he concluded that the only way to change the situation was to deal with his own instinctive reactions. When ever the two reached an impasse, he would check his own impatience and suggest that they break up and think about it before getting together again. Usually when they renewed their discussion, they had digested their differences and were more able to work them through.Gaining this level of selfawareness and acting on it are difficult but not impossible. For example, by reflecting over his past experiences, a young manager learned that he was not very good at dealing with difficult and emotional issues where people were involved. Because he disliked those issues and realized that his instinctive responses to them were seldom very good, he developed a habit of touching base with his boss whenever such a problem arose. Their discussions always surfaced ideas and approaches the manager had not considered. In many cases, they also identified specific actions the boss could take to help.Although a superiorsubordinate relationship is one of mutual dependence, it is also one in which the subordinate is typically more dependent on the boss than the other way around. This dependence inevitably results in the subordinate feeling a certain degree of frustration, sometimes anger, when his actions or options are constrained by his boss39。s typical response was to harden his position and overstate it. The manager39。s work style and to the implications of his boss39。s work style can be crucial, especially when the boss is new. For example, a new president who was organized and formal in his approach replaced a man who was informal and intuitive. The new president worked best when he had written reports. He also preferred formal meetings with set agendas.One of his division managers realized this need and worked with the new president to identify the kinds and frequency of information and reports that the president wanted. This manager also made a point of sending background information and brief agendas ahead of time for their discussions. He found that with this type of preparation their meetings were very useful. Another interesting result was, he found that with adequate preparation his new boss was even more effective at brainstorming problems than his more informal and intuitive predecessor had been.In contrast, another division manager never fully understood how the new boss39。s goals and problems and pressures. They are alert for opportunities to question the boss and others around him or her to test their assumptions. They pay attention to clues in the boss39。s objectives were. As a result, he ended up taking actions that were actually at odds with the president39。s new pricing scheme also failed to increase margins, and by the fourth quarter, both the president and the vice president were fired.What the new vice president had not known until it was too late was that improving marketing and sales had been only one of the president39。s long suits and blind spots? What is the preferred style of working? Does your boss like to get information through memos, formal meetings, or phone calls? Does he or she thrive on conflict or try to minimize it? Without this information, a manager is flying blind when dealing with the boss, and unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings, and problems are inevitable.In one situation we studied, a topnotch marketing manager with a superior performance record was hired into a pany as a vice president to straighten out the marketing and sales problems. The pany, which was having financial difficulties, had recently been acquired by a larger corporation. The president was eager to turn it around and gave the new marketing vice president free rein at least initially. Based on his previous experience, the new vice president correctly diagnosed that greater market share was needed for the pany and that strong product management was required to bring that about. Following that logic, he made a number of pricing decisions aimed at increasing highvolume business.When margins declined and the financial situation did not improve, however, the president increased pressure on the new vice president. Believing that the situation would eventually correct itself as the pany gaine