Question for people in the workplace: Suppose you are a senior member of a workgroup, but not the boss. Your boss is taking a different role in the organization, although you don’t know that, so the boss position is now open. For whatever reason, you are not being considered for the boss role, but you don’t know this. My question is, does management have any ethical or business reason to alert you they are hiring?
I don’t know that I fully understand the described situation, but at my company I have been on teams where new leadership was placed over me (like a leadership rotation type thing) with next to no warning, and I did not appreciate that. At my level, I would prefer being told when changes that impact me are happening, and I ask to be involved in the decision when possible (such as interviewing my new boss or anyone in leadership coming in). I’m often ignored, but sometimes not.
I’m not sure there are ethical or business reasons to be told, but great leadership is clear and transparent, among many other things. Personnel and morale concerns should be considered. Tough to comment on this situation though without more information. If I’m not being considered and not being told, why not? Is it a me problem, or a leadership problem?
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I don’t think that there is an ethical requirement in this case.
Lots of business reason, though, to let you know about up coming changes that are going to happen; but IMO, that should be from your immediate supervisor, not any “higher ups”.
If they’re not telling you that there’s going to be a change–and if you think you should be part of that change, either through consideration for the role or being involved in the process–that is very likely a key indicator of what “the next level” believes about your abilities OR that things are more political higher up than you might think.
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Apply for the job to force the conversation. The more senior the role, the harder it is figure out everyone fits in to that team as those positions are limited.
Generally don’t take things personally… market yourself as best you can and move on.
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At large organizations where I worked, jobs would eventually be publicly “posted” for a period of time. In those cases, it’s of course always better to give that employee a heads up that their bosses position is open before they find out about it in other ways.
At some of the same large organizations, management would have annual succession planning discussions. In some cases, you might not be on the short list for your bosses job. You might be on the short list for positions in other units. Succession planning was never set in stone, but rather to provide a short list of internal candidates that might be good in the role. When any job posted you could throw your hat in the ring and apply.
Like others said, I don’t think there are necessarily ethical reasons not to tell the employee but there are business considerations. One of the main ones is that if the employee is not happy about being kept in the dark or excluded from consideration, you could have some continuity problems if you lose both the boss and a key employee in a unit at the same time.
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Management can do whatever the 
it wants and they will. You need to toe the line and be a good little peon. Merry Christmas. I’m jaded.
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them installing someone without consulting you is a sign that they didn’t consider you for the role. but there could be reasons to keep things quiet internally too. your boss leaving for where might not be known everywhere and so the fewer people knowing all the moving pieces keeps it quiet if there are senstivities around it.
i’d like to be told. but they don’t need to tell me.
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As you get into leadership roles… important to keep in mind that you can be 100% capable of doing your boss’s job while at the same time your boss’s boss wants a different direction. You may be able to offer that, but it’s often difficult to demonstrate.
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The word ‘workgroup’ got me wondering if the role is for a multidisciplinary team. Leadership of such teams may also require visibility to a lot more stakeholders other than the boss’s boss.
No.
/thread.
Yes. My boss already announced that she’s retiring in a few months. So I intend to apply for it.
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No, management doesn’t owe you anything
But it would be nice if your boss told you he/she was moving into a new role tho just as a little heads up. If they didn’t tell you they probably hate you
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Agree with the no’s above, but it seems that it wouldn’t be the best way to handle it from the company’s perspective. Ideally mgmt should be transparent about why they decided you were not a candidate, and even before the opportunity been aware of your career ambitions and helped you know how to work for that. Transparency makes staffing decisions seem less arbitrary and not based on non-business factors like favoritism. If you disagree with mgmt’s view of your capabilities, you either work to change them or leave. Hiding the move from a direct report until reveal might buy them a small amount of time, but will definitely piss some people off and make the ultimate transition harder on the business.
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Should management inform you that they have laid off your boss?
Because, a friend had their boss laid off and no one bothered to talk to him about it until 2 days later.
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“Somebody else told him, right?”
– everyone else.
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Hi. I think we all agree that management is certainly not required to tell a current and senior employee that they are hiring someone to be your boss, and that they are not considering you.
But is there a business reason to do so?
In some ways we are still a small profession. If you have been around long enough, you have met colleagues through conferences or regional affiliate meetings or actuarial committees or elsewhere. Before you consider switching jobs to XYZ Company, you might know someone who works there now or who used to work there, well enough to call them and ask, “What’s it like working at XYZ?” And if the answer is something like, “Off the record and don’t quote me on this, but we really don’t treat our employees well.,” that’s pretty good intel that you will certainly consider.
There are employers that some consider not to be great places to work. This may be old information, and the information may be inaccurate, but the stereotypes are out there. You can probably think of a few such employers.
So does an employer care what current or past employees are saying about them? Probably not. But maybe they should be, and that is the business reason to be up-front with employees.
By the way, this works both ways. I once received a call from a friend, “We are thinking of hiring Joe Actuary. He used to work for you. Off the record, what do you think of him?”
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I’ll start with the question should employers care what current or past employees are saying about them? and the answer should obviously be yes. Do they, though? I think that really depends on the size of the company and its location, with management attitude falling under that. I think the answer tends toward no simply because that’s how the corporate world works, but I’ve seen exceptions to that.
And yes, it does work both ways. I have a small list of people I’ve worked with that I’m very I will never work with them again. I might be on the same list for those same people.
A tangent to the current topic: what irks me more is when a company talks about valuing its employees and believing in promoting from within, and then opens up a position and makes an external hire for it. That might be worse than your boss moves up/over and the company doesn’t come to one of their direct reports for the replacement. On occasion, yeah - you do have to go external, because it really is something you can’t fill from within because no one has the experience or knowledge to do it. When it happens consistently, that creates employee morale problems and aggravates any problems that already exist.
Having seen the end stages of prioritizing internal promotions and rarely hiring externally, I’m not a fan. This is how you end up with giant blind spots, brutal internal politics promoting hyper competitiveness, compounding bad leadership styles, and ultimately poor business decisions. And in my specific situation, toxic boys clubs. External hires are a good thing, good for the industry and good for companies.
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I am curious which paradigm of leadership did that organisation follow, nature or nurture?
I’m not sure it’s really fully either? I guess I would say nurture, as the people who succeeded were groomed to be exactly like the people who came before them, but “grooming” implies development and there really wasn’t any of that.
Naturally good leaders were appreciated, but not sought out. Leadership was never really seen as a quality, only a byproduct of success. If you were really good at your job and played the game right, you’d end up in leadership, and there was not a ton of development from there on how to be a successful or effective leader.
From there, success was all about making friends with the right people and moving around often enough that no one could really judge your effectiveness.
Not to say there weren’t good leaders there. There were great leaders, I have some mentors from there. But those kinds of leaders often got stuck in middle management because they weren’t as skilled at politics.
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