When Your New Boss Won’t Stop Making Hasty Decisions

Be diplomatic, find common ground, and ask if they’re open to alternative ideas.

It’s normal to feel unsettled when you get a new boss, and it can be especially disorienting if they come in and start making decisions that don’t seem to make sense. What should you do if you’re in this situation? Should you speak up or just take their new suggestions in stride? Start by assuming good intentions and take an active role in helping your boss understand the nuances of how the organization operates. Ask tactful, open-ended questions to gain clarity on your boss’s reasoning, and be diplomatic and constructive when expressing reservations. Frame your feedback as a way to achieve shared goals. It can also be helpful to talk with your colleagues about the benefits and drawbacks of your boss’s decisions. It’s an opportunity to gauge your team’s perspective and serve as “a gut check” to determine if others share your concerns.

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  Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.
  

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