In literature, the unreliable narrator can be a delightful way to introduce suspense or tension. An unreliable narrator tells lies or misunderstands the world, and therefore can’t be trusted. They seem believable at first, but the reader soon realizes they’re not credible. You need to doubt what they say, and figure out what is really true.

The unreliable narrator is much less delightful as a manager.

Or as your manager’s manager. Or the general manager of your division. Or as the CEO.

The unreliable narrator as manager makes getting work done much less effective, and much less enjoyable besides.

Up front, I’d like to say that I’ve had some good managers in my career. I’ve also had a few that inspired this post.¹ At least one was not my direct manager, but was higher up the reporting chain.

What Does It Look Like?

In literature, there’s really only one way to know if the narrator is unreliable: to compare the events to what the narrator tells you. If they don’t match up—if the evidence casts doubt on the narrator’s interpretation—the narrator is unreliable.²

In being managed, the basic test is pretty similar. If your manager says things that don’t line up with reality, there’s a chance they’re an unreliable narrator.

That said, it can be hard to apply that basic test if you don’t have a way to check in with reality. Sometimes you can: if Finance sends a company-wide email about the new expense reporting system that everybody must use, and your manager says to keep using the old one, you have a few ways to discover the truth.³ On the other hand, if your manager tells you the Jones account is our highest priority and you’ll need to pause your work on the Smith account, you might just have to believe them.

Even when you “just have to believe them”, there can be hints. After your manager paused your work on the Smith account, maybe you hear something in the hallway about how we’re just not getting traction on the Smith account lately and gosh it seems like we’re not working on our priorities. The hints often aren’t completely reliable. But they’re often the first inkling that a manager might be an unreliable narrator.

A common manifestation of a manager as an unreliable narrator is confidence in higher-level buy-in on projects or initiatives that doesn’t materialize. Now, unexpected lack of support is something that happens even to the most reliable of narrators. I would not deem a manager as an unreliable narrator after a single instance. But if there’s a pattern, either your manager is an unreliable narrator, or their reporting/approval chain contains an unreliable narrator, or both.⁴

If confidence in higher-level buy-in shows up simply as confidence or bravado in discussions (“…and so I’m sure we’ll get approval for the Sigma project soon”), the impact of the unreliable narration is limited. Sure, some mental energy is spent planning and thinking about a future that never materializes, and that does slow things down a bit. But if the confidence leads to committing resources to work that’s soon stopped (because there wasn’t buy-in, and those resources are needed for other work that does have buy-in), that’s wasteful.⁵

Another common manifestation, in my experience, is an unwillingness to take a position or make a decision that is clearly the manager’s responsibility.⁶ This one might seem a bit strange—after all, the manager isn’t telling you something that doesn’t line up with reality…right?⁷ In a sense, the manager is only choosing to not tell you what the decision is, and so in that sense, right. But zooming out a bit, the manager is also implicitly communicating that the decision is not needed, at least not from them, or not now.

A simple example of that is a team that’s asking for guidance on scope and timeline for a project. “Okay, boss, we see two basic options. One is two months and includes features A-F. The other is four months and includes features A-M. What fits into our department or company goals?” There are a variety of good ways for a manager to answer that question: making a decision, providing general guidance so the team can decide, saying “I don’t know” and getting more information, or pointing the team to someone else who might be able to decide. All potentially good, reality-based responses. But an unreliable narrator, wanting to seem reliable and knowledgeable, might bluster and deflect: “we’ll need to look at the options and pick the one that’s most appropriate, so keep at it.”⁸ That doesn’t help the team move forward. The manager is also implicitly casting doubt on the notion that their input is needed at all.

I’ve noticed that unreliable narration will often come out in regard to promotions or raises. I suspect there are a lot of reasons that go into that (avoiding uncomfortable conversations, trying to look knowledgeable while actually not, ego protection, and more!), and it can be an area that’s difficult to reality check.

To sum up what an unreliable narrator as manager looks like: it’s when the reality communicated by your manager consistently does not line up with actual reality. It affects you, and it affects your work. Work becomes harder. Work becomes less enjoyable. And you have to spend time playing Scooby-Doo detective to find out what’s really going on.⁹

What Can You Do?

So if you suspect your boss is an unreliable narrator, what can you do to improve your work life?

You could try talking to them about it. It’s possible they’re unaware of what they’re doing. But this can be a dangerous move if you don’t trust your boss. And if you think they’re an unreliable narrator, you already have some level of distrust. I don’t recommend a general conversation. Or sending them this blog post and saying “Boss! It’s you!”

What I do recommend is that you make sure you have a way of knowing what’s real: take notes, talk to others, and test perceptions against reality.

Taking notes is something you should be doing anyway as a professional. Especially as you get older, further along in your career, and gain more responsibilities, your brain can’t hold everything. Taking notes gives you a record of things that have happened. Write down decisions, things your boss has promised, requests, and information you’ve been provided. Then, instead of trying to figure out if you just remembered wrong about the priority list from the staff meeting three months ago, you can find the note and read it and be certain. (I like pen on actual dead-trees paper in a spiral notebook, one page per day, with the date written on the page. You don’t have to do that, and it does have the disadvantage of not being easily searchable, but it also makes sure I don’t accidentally delete a note.)

Talking to others is always important, and even more so when you suspect you have an unreliable narrator for a manager. You need relationships at work outside your boss.¹⁰ You need relationships with peers on your team. They’ll have most of the same context you do, but might interpret things differently or be told different things by your boss. You need relationships with individuals outside your team. They’ll have different context, different sources of information, and can give a much different perspective. You need a relationship with your boss’s boss. They have different concerns than your boss, and might be able to serve as a way to check reality. Note that it’s not enough to have relationships—you need to talk to the folks you have relationships with and use those relationships.

Testing your perceptions against reality is either the easiest or the hardest step. It can be ridiculously easy when reality intrudes on an unreliable narrator’s narrative. There’s a lot of schadenfreude that comes from watching an unreliable narrator confidently explain that “the CEO told me the restructure is going to go like this…” and flail when the actual restructure goes very differently. In those cases, there’s nothing you have to do besides remember and observe. In other cases, it’s harder. Testing might mean asking other folks some uncomfortable questions (“what are you hearing about the restructure?”, “who’s setting your priorities these days, and what are you focused on?”, “hey, I’ve been told we’re ignoring the Jones account for now, do you know why?”, or “sales numbers are way down but the boss says not to worry about it, what are you hearing?”). It can take some care, especially when talking to your boss’s boss about your boss.

Even if testing your perceptions against reality is difficult, you need to do it if you have an inkling that your manager might be an unreliable narrator. Your ability to be effective in your job depends on it. Your next career step, next raise, and next promotion all depend on your ability to be effective in your job.

Ultimately, if you’re stuck with an unreliable narrator for a manager and they’re negatively affecting your career or your life, you might need to leave. Finding a new job elsewhere¹¹ and leaving the company is a pretty straightforward way to leave. So is finding a different role elsewhere in the company (maybe you move to continue doing engineering but in a different department, or you leave the reception desk to supervise on the factory floor). Less straightforward, but more fun¹², is to earn yourself a promotion so you’re peers with your boss. Then maybe another so you’re now managing them and can require them to change their behavior.

As I start wrapping up, I recognize that I have a strong bias toward reality. Truth matters to me. Context also matters to me a lot.¹³ And so I’m probably more sensitive to the unreliable narrator as manager than most.

I’m also currently a manager. I want everyone who reports to me to have as clear a view of reality as possible. I still want them to verify that what I say generally lines up with reality, because I make mistakes.¹⁴ If my team understands reality, they’ll do their jobs better, which makes me look better.

I don’t tell my team everything. Some things I can’t tell them. Some things are irrelevant (“hey, y’all, they rearranged the menu so when I go to approve your time off requests it’s now listed under ‘Team Absence’ rather than ‘Time Off’…why are you all dozing off?”). Some things I can summarize. Some things I’ll tell part of my team (“hey, you’re on the Aardvark project, heads-up, Jenny’s taking over as the Finance lead on it”). But it’s not my job to hoard information. It’s to be a conduit for information. Sometimes I add context, sometimes I summarize, sometimes I interpret and re-shape, but it’s all with the goal of giving my team the best representation of what is really, truly going on that I can. Again, that’ll help them do their jobs better.

I can understand why other managers might be unreliable narrators. That doesn’t mean I approve, though. I certainly don’t want to be one. Or work for one. Or have anyone work for one.

If you are a manager and suspect you may be an unreliable narrator, drop me a line. I might be able to help.

1. If you’re reading this and wondering if you were one of the managers that inspired this post, it’s probably not you. If you still think it might be you, drop me a line and ask. Hint: if you’re reading this and self-reflecting, it’s probably not you; if you’re willing to drop me a line and ask, it’s almost definitely not you. [↩]
2. Yes, it’s more complex than that. There are different types of unreliability, and reliability interacts with point of view and limitations of knowledge. As a quick functional test, it’s a pretty decent way to figure it out. [↩]
3. For example, you could reply to the email from Finance. You could ask your boss’s boss. You could try submitting expenses using the old method and see if they get paid. [↩]
4. If the root is that my boss’s boss regularly offers support that fails to materialize, I would expect my boss to learn from that. If my boss does not learn, fairly quickly, I would still attribute unreliability to my boss—though due to naivete rather than other causes. [↩]
5. A fun useful exercise is to filter this scenario through the “8 Wastes of Lean” (or “TIMWOODS”) and see how many categories of waste such activity creates. It’s at least Skills, Inventory, and Overprocessing; possibly Transport, Motion, and Overproduction as well, depending on the specific tasks. (Okay. It is fun. Let’s be honest. Identifying that your manager’s overconfidence led to waste in six out of eight categories? Fun!) [↩]
6. It’s entirely legitimate to delegate decisions, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. If a manager will neither make a decision nor delegate that decision, that’s what I’m talking about. [↩]
7. With a set-up like that, you know the response has to be “WRONG!” [↩]
8. I’ll note that there are times this is a perfectly valid answer. It’s not valid when offered absent guidance. There are times when a company has a clear limit to its budget (time, dollars, etc.) for a piece of work; pretending that those limits do not exist is intentionally denying useful information to people trying to do the work. It’s that last situation that this scenario reflects. [↩]
9. And your boss would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you pesky kids and your blog posts! [↩]
10. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx [↩]
11. I hope your new job elsewhere comes with a raise and a promotion. [↩]
12. I’ve never done this myself, so I can only assume it’s more fun. [↩]
13. Truth plus context lead me to say “it depends” a lot. Because, in reality (see what I did there?), it does depend. [↩]
14. If you report to me, and you suspect I’m being an unreliable narrator, please say something. It’s possible there’s information you’re missing. It’s possible there’s information I’m missing. It’s also entirely possible I’m making a mistake in perceiving my narration as generally reliable. Your reality check might be uncomfortable for us both, but it’s welcome. [↩]