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Environment :

My boss, John, has three managers (Heather, Rudy and Gary) reporting to him, and each one is in charge of a team. Difficult times within Rudy's team are the reason for that question.

I have been there for 6 months, and report directly to John, but have no managerial duties. All of us are engineers and have held other positions within the company for several years. John took over the division 3 months ago, he is quite shy about bringing any change, leading us to believe that his management style might be wu wei (non-action).

Situation :

I was already aware that Phil and Richie, the two guys in charge of our internal tools and part of Rudy's team, were struggling with his management and wished for more autonomy. One month ago, they introduced a formal, argumented request to depend directly from John, instead of being part of Rudy's team. This ended up in a meeting between John, Rudy and myself (but not Phil and Richie). John was not willing to change the organization and finally decided that the only change would be my participating to the weekly meeting Rudy holds with Phil and Richie, to reconcile the parties if needed.

Last week, I walked into an informal meeting featuring most of Rudy's team - but not Rudy himself, as he was the topic of the exchange. All of them, from the newcomers to the old-timers, were complaining about him (lack of help or support, micromanagement of minor tasks, haphazard task assignment, complete ignorance about training, not cascading information, ...). According to them, Rudy is committing teamicide, maybe unknowingly. The are considering their options, and I have a feeling they are really on edge.

The company held an HR-sanctioned event focused on "well-being at work" earlier this year, where we all filled a questionnaire, then each manager was given a synthesis of his or her team's replies, shared it with them and devised an action plan to improve. Unsurprisingly, Rudy's team nailed a "lack of recognition for their achivements", which he dismissed by suggesting that he would be holding group hug threapy session whenever they need.

Question :

The team is close to a meltdown (medical leave, request transfers ..), and this would definitely impact my activities as I work regularly with members of all three teams, and even more often with Phil and Richie.

Is there any way for me to prevent that ?

What I have tried so far :

• bring relevant news directly to Phil and Richie, without waiting for Rudy to cascade them


• in the meeting with John and Rudy, suggested to contact another division, that has similar needs but a different structure, to learn from them


• study questions here : in particular this question would be similar if I were John. Unfortunately I cannot act on his behalf.

TL, DR : A manager who is my peer is not realizing his team is about to collapse. How can I bring the news to him ?

Do you think that the issues with Rudy's team are due to his inability to manage (as opposed to an unmanageable employee) and do you think there is any reasonable chance that anything you tell Rudy can cause him to salvage his team? If the answer is no, then I think your obligation is to bring it up with John instead.

John, by inviting you to sit in on Rudy's team meetings, seems to have understood that he needed a neutral party, perhaps to "reconcile" as you said, but perhaps to help him understand if the issue is with Rudy, or with a team member(s).

If you are convinced that the issue is with Rudy, and that it is really unlikely that Rudy can fix it on his own, then John, as Rudy's manager, needs to know that there is a real, legitimate, management issue with one of the teams.

It is not your job to propose a fix, or to implicate who is at fault: that is John's. But it is your job to let him know that he has a problem, and the scale of it - if the team blew up, and you didn't provide him with enough of a warning, it could look very poorly on you.