Closer Age to Your Manager, Greater Urgency

If you’re the department head and your deputy’s seniority, influence, and track record all surpass yours, you’re in a tough spot.

If you don’t respect them—and they’re usually right—everyone’s watching. If you do respect them, that’s, in a sense, a surrender of your authority.

Your deputy makes a suggestion today that aligns with your vision, and you adopt it. Tomorrow, she offers another good one, and you adopt that too.

To the rest of the staff, it doesn’t look nuanced. They’re not going to unpack the subtle links between her suggestions and your strategic plan. What they see is this: she has serious influence, and whatever she says, the boss goes along with.

Then comes the third proposal. It doesn’t serve your interests, but it benefits most employees. What do you do?

Go along with it, and you get sidelined. Reject it, and you make enemies and lose support.

So to a new department head, a deputy like that becomes a thorn in their flesh—a problem to be removed at the earliest opportunity. Usual tactics? Either hand them an impossible task to fail at, using it as grounds to remove them, or shelve them quietly and marginalize them.