Chain Of Command

So here's the scenario. An employee has someone they report to, and life is as it's been for a long time. Then, one day, the person your manager reports to comes to you and asks you for something, you give it to them, and suddenly it looks like you're reporting to that person more than your own supervisor. Not only that, but often this person is asking you for information, or having you do things, and telling you not to tell your supervisor anything about it because it's not all that important.

This is not an uncommon scenario in the working world. Quite often employees are forced to make decision as to who they really report to, or whom they should be loyal to. Often they'll pick the top dog rather than their direct report because, after all, that person controls the purse strings, and that person can have a direct effect as to whether you're eligible promotion material. If you're ambitious, like Anakin Skywalker was in Star Wars, an employee might be blinded by what the reality is as opposed to what the right thing to do might be.

If course, sometimes, as leaders who oversee other leaders, we don't realize how we set employees up to have to make these types of decisions, because we sometimes forget about the concept of "chain of command", which was originally established so that those at the top had little to do with those at lower levels in the military, because it's easier to send a bunch of people into battle to kill or be killed for you if you don't know them. In a proper chain of command, a higher ranking leader doesn't go over the head of someone who reports to them for information or to give directions in any manner, and conversely the "soldier" or front line staff is encouraged not to go around their supervisor to contact the manager more directly, unless first having a conversation with the supervisor. As a matter of fact, subordinates usually get into trouble for breaking the chain of command, even if that pattern was established by upper management.

Trying seeing this from an employees point of view. If they don't respond to the top person, they could get reprimanded. If they do and the supervisor finds out, they could be in trouble because the supervisor wants to know what's going on within their department at all times. Sometimes it's a supervisor from another department who's gone to the employee asking for information instead of going to the supervisor first, and that also will cause conflict within the workplace at times. Yet, employees don't always differentiate between their own supervisors and supervisors of other departments; they see the title, rather than the specific chain of command.

Of course there is one situation which can also impact this issue. Supervisors and managers don't always know what their employees actually do, even though they're right there with them. It's easy to miss, because if a supervisor has ten people who are supposed to be doing the same exact thing, they often don't know that one employee has figured out a different system, or that one employee doesn't understand the impact or the directions for completing a duty a certain way, and sometimes a director or other superior might want to get information directly from the horse's mouth, where it won't be filtered by someone else telling them what they "think" something is, rather than knowing what it actually is.

These are tough concepts to come to grips with, and yet managers at every step of an organization needs to learn how to deal with them so as to not create conflict within the organization. Here are some tips for guarding against this problem:

1. Establish chain of command rules from the very beginning. This way, everyone knows exactly who they're supposed to report to, for what, and when they can deviate from the norm.
2. Establish a good rapport with those people who do report to you. The thing about loyalty is that people will go out of their way to work for, and reward, a leader who they trust, respect, and can communicate well with. If you can establish this, you'll never end up with the scenario of an employee not telling you when something is going on that's going around the chain of command.
3. Get a buy-in from the person you report to, and others within the organization. A plan of action is only as good as how people follow those rules both within and outside the department or organization. It does no good to have a policy that upper management isn't going to try to follow, because it can only be marginally effective without their support of the concept.
4. Make sure you always know everything that your employees know, and what they're doing. If you can keep up with everything that's going on, can lay your hands on the same reports and information that they can, and can always answer any question that might be asked of your staff, then there will never be a legitimate reason for anyone to ever have to bypass you for information, unless you're not there, or, unfortunately, if they're evaluating your performance with the intention of possible dismissing you. And if it's this last one, there's nothing you can really do about it.

All of us who are in management positions should always strive to make the workplace as safe an environment for our employees as possible. Allowing employees the freedom to make decisions, if trained well, is a wonderful thing. But establishing certain rules of decorum and procedure is also a wonderful thing, because it ends any worry whatsoever about the breakdown of the chain of command.