Note: I wasn’t sure what to use as flair but I think office relations is relevant enough.
My manager is a great guy, super flexible and understanding/friendly but with one glaring flaw: he is can’t actually manage. His position was recently restructured and now he only manages me but somehow, I’ve realized, is manager in title only and I’m becoming resentful. I lead meetings with partner organizations, I do the reporting, the in-the-field work, scheduling, etc. Last week I had to correct an email he sent out to one of our partners that would’ve stopped us from completing a program deliverable. I honestly didn’t even realize until he got shifted to only managing me just how much work I’m doing on our program and how little he actually does. I know our grants like the back of my hand and even after a year of managing them, he still needs me to re-explain them. I’ve worked with managers that have their head in the sand before but this is different. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s mentally checked out or what, but it’s really starting to irritate me. It’s gotten to the point where coworkers have mistakenly referred to me as the program manager because of how seemingly absent he is. All this is to say I know it needs to be addressed, I just don’t know how without completely throwing him under the bus. It’s probably stupid, but it shouldn’t be on me to “delegate” work back to my own supervisor. Not to mention, I have this unshakable fear that depending on what I give him, it’ll be done wrong and somehow reflect back poorly on me. I really don’t know how to approach this, we’ve been friendly outside of work as well so I really don’t want to ruffle feathers too much but something has to be said.