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Is it reasonable to give your boss feedback about his/her management style, and if so, how?

Asked by nikipedia (28077points) November 8th, 2010

If you don’t want to read this whole thing, feel free to just answer the title question. Excessive detail to follow:

I’m getting really sick of my boss.

I am a graduate student and he is my adviser. He is a reasonably well-known professor in our field and a full professor at a large, public research university.

In general, I really like working in our lab. I have a great deal of academic freedom and absolutely love the work that we do. However, my adviser has some very specific qualities that, after two years of working for him, are becoming infuriating:

(1) Total lack of praise. We all work extremely hard, frequently go above and beyond, and are productive, successful graduate students. However, any kind of praise is virtually nonexistent.

(2) Stubbornly refusing to use technology that make other people’s lives easier. While there are many examples, the worst is that he refuses to get a purchasing card for the lab even though we have frequent expenses. These require us to use our own money and then get reimbursed, which is a financial burden for all of us students, and creates a great deal more paperwork for our bookkeeper.

(3) Serious ADD. I frequently schedule one-hour meetings with him that consist of 55 minutes of him talking about the president, football, etc., and 5 minutes at the end of “oh yeah, we were supposed to talk about…”

(4) Weird assertions of his superiority/dominance/authority/genius. For instance, I emailed him asking for permission to do something, and CCed our bookkeeper. I specifically addressed the email to him and only at the end asked, “Bookkeeper, if this turns out to be feasible, what is the best way to do it?” To which he sent me a stern email informing me that he, and not the bookkeeper, was the only person who could grant permission to do this. I know, and that’s why I very clearly addressed the email to him.

I apologize for the long rant. I am hoping this prevents me from firing off a snarky email to this guy. And I really do have a question in here: is it reasonable to try to address these concerns with him, or do I just accept he’s always going to be kind of a dick and try to laugh it off?

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