Your boss keeps going around you to your team

You find out about the new piece of work when one of your people mentions it in passing. Your boss asked them for it directly on Tuesday. It is due Friday, nobody told you, and the thing you had them working on has quietly stopped.

The first time it happens you let it go. Senior people are busy, and the fastest route to an answer is often the person who has it. By the fifth time your team has worked something out. There are two people they answer to, and only one of them signs off on their year.

Your team is paying for it before you are

Look at it from where they sit. A request arrives from two levels up. Refusing it is not an option they can see. So they drop what you asked for, do the new thing, and hope you do not mind. Then they wait to find out whether you mind.

They are guessing at priorities you never set, with no way to check them. They are also carrying a small daily worry about which of you to disappoint, and that worry does not show up in any report. How many of your people have quietly decided it is safer to say yes to your boss and explain to you later?

The work suffers in a way that is hard to point at. Deadlines you agreed slip for reasons that sound reasonable one at a time. Someone is at full stretch and you cannot see why, because half their list came from a conversation you were not in. When did you last see the whole of what one of your people is carrying?

It is rarely a verdict on you

The reading that hurts most is that your boss does not trust you. Sometimes that is true, and you would usually know. More often it is habit. They used to run a smaller team where everyone reported to them, and they still reach for the nearest person who can answer. Or they wanted something fast, you were in a meeting, and your name was simply not the first one that came up.

Some bosses do it because they miss the detail and enjoy being close to the work. Some do it because you have been slow to answer, and this is the version of feedback you are getting. Which of those fits? Be honest with yourself about that before you raise it, because the conversation goes differently depending on the answer.

Do not make your team choose

The response that feels most natural is the worst one. You tell your people to send everything from your boss through you first. You have now put them in the middle of a disagreement between the two people with the most say over their careers. They will nod, and then they will keep answering your boss, because that is the person they cannot afford to refuse.

Say the opposite. If my boss asks you for something, do it, and tell me the same day. That is the whole rule. You take the problem of two masters off their desk and put it on yours, which is where it belongs. What would it mean to your team to hear that from you plainly?

Take your boss a mechanism

Have the conversation with your boss once, and go in with a request rather than a complaint. Complaining about being bypassed sounds like a question about your standing, and nobody above you wants to spend time managing your standing.

Ask for one habit instead. Copy me when you go to them directly. Or, if it will take more than an hour of their time, let me know so I can move something. Then put the cost in terms your boss cares about. The deliverable they wanted moved by a week because the person doing it was pulled onto something else they also asked for. That is a conversation about their own priorities colliding, and they will recognise it.

Then make yourself easy to come to. If your boss goes to your team because you are slow or hard to reach, no agreement will hold for long. Answer the same day. Bring the update before it is asked for. The surest protection against being bypassed is being the quickest route to what they need. When did your boss last get an answer from you within the hour?

Decide what you are actually protecting

Some of this is about your team, and some of it is about you, and it is worth knowing the split. You do need to know what your people are working on. You do not need to be the only door to them. A manager who cannot bear anyone else speaking to their team is protecting something other than the work.

So aim for visibility rather than control. If every request reaches you within a day, you can set priorities and move load around before anything breaks. That is the job, and nothing in it requires your boss to stop talking to your people.

This week, tell your team the one rule: do what they ask, and tell me. Then take the mechanism to your boss. Which of those two conversations have you been putting off longer?