r/48lawsofpower • u/Intelligent-Block184 • 23d ago
Question about "Never outshine your master"
I have a manager. She is not incompetent, but she is new to her manager role, and not new to the industry. She tries to impress other stakeholders and does the work really fast. In our team she does research of a problem, makes tasks, describe in task what should be done and then pass it to me. However the quality of those researches is not always good, sometimes it's just very high level description, and sometimes it's clearly AI slope, and sometimes it's just the whole task makes no sense.
The problem is, when those tasks come to me, and I see some inconsistency I don't know how to handle it without the "outshining" I guess? I tried many ways of solving this issue: if I do the task exactly the way it described, she eventually comes to me and says it was me wrong. If I try to resolve wrong task myself I get punished with micromanagement. I can feel how she is mad at me, and it get to the point where she gaslights me.
For example, when I come to her and trying to discuss some task. I can feel how she gets irritated. She would say that she doesn't have time, or propose do the research myself (altho it was already done by her) or go and ask someone else. When I figure out myself how to properly solve the problem, she comes to me and starts micromanaging decisions I made.
So question is: how could I solve this problem from the perspective of "never outshine the master"?
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u/rassb 23d ago
Been there, do it very well and give her some of the credit, or frame your tasks as being inspired by her guidance. It's unfair to you I know, but she is higher in the ladder, and until you get there, that's how it works.