My Manager Plays Favorites - Help! (Ask Christa! S7E75)

Introduction

Hi everyone, and welcome to Ask Christa! I’m Christa Dhimo, and my show is a free resource to help people get through common day to day issues at work. In each episode I answer a listener question about business challenges and workplace issues, and you know how it helps to like and subscribe—and I THANK YOU for the support.

This is episode 75 in Season SEVEN, which continues our focus on Dealing with Bad Bosses. Remember: all my episodes offer additional resources, too, so check them out in the show notes.

Today’s episode is about what do to when your manager clearly plays favorites, and does so thinking it will motivate others   to do better, somehow missing the fact that most people don’t want to be pinned against each other, much less compared and contrasted at an exhausting rate. Our listener’s question also deals with a manager who rotates who his favorite is every few weeks.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “My manager plays favorites, and not in a subtle way. For a couple of weeks, I'll be the favorite, and he gives me big compliments on my work, and he openly talks about me in front of my team in a positive way, but also in a “she’s my favorite this week” way. Then suddenly I am moved to the background again and for a week he makes no remarks about my work. Then a week or two later, he'll select someone else on the team to be his favorite and does the same: praise, extras, recognition. We all talk about it, and it's becoming uncomfortable when it's our "weeks" for being his favorite because it doesn't feel genuine. It also feels like he’s trying to create competition among us, but it doesn't do that. Instead, we make bets on who will be his favorite next. Based on your other episodes, we've already reviewed some policies and have a meeting with our HR Business Partner next week. What should we do, though?"

This is such an uncomfortable dynamic, and not just because of the overt way the manager plays favorites, but also because the team makes a joke about it—and I have to say, that’s actually a show of how tight and aligned the team is in spite of the manager’s questionable style. The most impressive part for me is how the team is talking about it to each other and not giving in to the natural instinct to compete, which seems to be what the team believes the manager is trying to do.

Playing Favorites is a Terrible Idea (Always)

No one is ever motivated by perceived favoritism. In fact, favoritism—especially this type, where it rotates to different team members—has and will always DE-motivate people because it is, by definition,  subjective. Yes—it may feel or seem like a manager favors a top performer, but if that person is truly a top performer, then typically what you see are ways in which the organization continues to recognize and reward a top performer, with promotional opportunities, monetary and recognition rewards, and other aspects typically tied with performance. There’s always a personal feeling associated with how people get their work done, but rewarding and recognizing top performers should be backed by evidence. In many ways, it’s never personal, even if the manager feels proud of a top performer on their team receiving such gains after such high performance.

But in our listener’s case, the manager seems to truly be playing favorites, and that’s a terrible idea for sooooo many reasons:

First—the manager is fortunate to have such a strong team in place, but when attention and praise are distributed in a way that feels uneven or unpredictable—AND subjective, entirely on the whims and fancy of the manager, team members quickly feel less stable in their roles and unsure of their performance, even if they have evidence of how good they’re performing at work.

Second: the manager is taking a HUGE hit on his credibility, and when manager’s lose credibility with their team, trust and respect issues abound. So does employee engagement or any sense that even an AVERAGE performance at work will make a difference, much less if someone decides to go above and beyond their role. Again, favoritism is not aligned with performance; it’s aligned with feelings and whims. Who can respect that?

Now, I will say this: there are some people who genuinely believe that everyone should have a turn receiving praise and recognition whether they deserve it or not, and as I always say, most people never receive management training. Now, it’s not up to you to figure out what is behind the manager’s style for rotating who his favorites are, but… everyone deserves a little grace and the benefit of the doubt if you truly do not know enough about the situation to know what’s behind it.

Managing a Playing-Favorites Manager

So—how to manage a manager playing favorites? Our listener and the team already made the right choices to stick together and reach out to their resources. I recognize not everyone has that in their environment, so if you’re dealing with a manager who plays favorites, take a step back and—as I always say—know your resources. Our listener mentioned policies, and yes, those are resources, likely the one that focuses on equal opportunity employment and fairness in the workplace if you work in the United States, and there are similar and in some cases better laws in other countries, too. 

What else can you do? For starters: learn from this as you build your own values system and management techniques for your future. We can all use every day observations as ways to learn about good management AND what we never want to do as a manager. Learn about effective motivational techniques for teams, ways to praise and recognize top performers without reducing or diminishing the good, solid performers—and of course, how to manage poor performance to give your employees a chance to improve when needed and if that’s a possible path for them. Learning from a bad situation can take the sting out, or at least create a more constructive situation for you.

Next, and specific to our listener’s question, write down the facts associated with the favoritism: the observed behavior, the impact of that behavior, and what you’d like to see instead. This is the BIC method for feedback that I’ve talked about in a lot of other episodes: the B is for Observable Behavior, the I is for Impact, and the C is for Change or Continue. In this case, it would look like this, “Our manager repeatedly rotates who he plays favorites with. Every few weeks it’s someone new on the team, where he’ll offer different opportunities, praise their work, and even neglect others on the team. When he does this, he not only loses credibility with us, but also creates an uncomfortable situation where we have to boost each other up just to get through whoever is the favorite for that week. We believe in rewarding and recognizing good work, so we’d like more clarity and consistency in how he does just that: rewards and recognizes good work. It doesn’t help anyone if we’re perceiving it as him playing favorites versus being on the merits of our work outcomes.”

And of course, stay connected as a team without going down as a team, and what I mean by that is: try to stay above the fray. Resist the urge to invite negativity and bad behavior to the team, such as talking about your boss to other teams or airing your grievances as complaints without offering what you may need to remedy the situation. Those behaviors might feel better in the moment, but it’s not going to fix much longer term.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, the first is a research report from Gallup, partnered with WorkHuman, called, “The Human-Centered Workplace: Building Organizational Cultures that Thrive.” The report includes techniques for recognition, and like all feedback, it’s best done in a timely, specific, and performance-aligned way. There are several other resources on the page where you can download the report, too.

Next is an insightful article from The Niagara Institute called “20 Signs of Favoritism at Work and What You Can Do About It.” For a list of 20 things, it’s a short read, and I am offering it more as a means to validate whether you’re experiencing favoritism or not—and chances are, if you’re wondering, it’s because you’re experiencing it.

Last is an article from Ivy Exec called “Five Non-Confrontational Ways for Dealing with Favoritism at Work.” What I like about this article is it focuses on ways to be constructive in such an uncomfortable dynamic, especially if YOU’RE the one who is the favorite. We’d all like to think we can address things upfront and be direct, but there a lot of circumstances that require ways for us to manage things with a soft touch, and addressing favoritism is generally one of them. It’s often a complicated situation.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Question

And that’s a wrap for Episode 75 from season seven focused on Dealing with Bad Bosses. Like and subscribe here, but also go to my site and send in YOUR question. It’s AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H. You’ll also see answers to other questions, listed by category and season, and every season has a theme. As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!