Plan for Interference: Work Navigation and the Micromanaging Boss

Most workplace advice assumes you can leave. Quit, find a better boss, start over. For plenty of people that option sits behind a student loan or a tight job market, and the advice has nothing left to offer them. Lynnae Brown, Consultant and Strategist at Lynnae Brown LLC, spent more than a decade training and managing people in mental health recovery. She built her work navigation approach during her own burnout as a program director, when she was two and a half years from student loan forgiveness and couldn't walk away. In this episode, she covers: Why a micromanaging boss's habits become planning information once you ask whether he does it to everyone How small, quiet experiments, like leaving at 6:00 instead of 7:00, show you which expectations are real and which are just habit What HR can say to a struggling employee that starts with empathy and moves to questions, without sounding like the company line Timestamps [00:01:32] What work navigation is: reading what's really happening at work and finding where you have agency, with staying sane as the goal instead of promotion [00:03:18] Why treating irritants as information gives you a more neutral way to decide what to do when you're fed up [00:04:33] A micromanaging boss walkthrough: ask whether he does it to everyone, and why the answer takes the problem off your shoulders [00:11:10] How Lynnae developed work navigation during her own burnout in 2018, when two and a half years from student loan forgiveness meant she couldn't leave [00:12:05] Why wanting to keep your job without chasing a promotion lets you drop the glad-handing, from the gala to after-work drinks [00:15:50] Where to start: use what irritates you as the entry point for figuring out what isn't working [00:16:53] Testing whether 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. is required by trying 8:00 to 6:00, and telling the difference between someone being irked and your job being in danger [00:18:17] Questioning invisible labor, from the Dixie Cups to the meeting notes, by seeing what happens when you stop doing it [00:19:59] Whether quiet experiments can work in military and other highly documented workplaces, where an experiment can end up in your file [00:24:15] How HR can offer work navigation to an employee without sounding like it's reading the company line: empathy first, then questions Guest Bio: Lynnae Brown, Consultant and Strategist at Lynnae Brown LLC, spent more than a decade training and managing people in mental health recovery. She built her work navigation approach during her own burnout as a program director, when she was two and a half years from student loan forgiveness and couldn't walk away. She has lectured at Columbia University, NYU, and Mount Sinai, and holds a degree in International Business and Marketing from Northeastern University. Brought to You by Paylocity: Paylocity is the fastest growing unified platform for HR, Finance, and IT. Paylocity brings your people, processes, and data together in one place so HR leaders can spend less time managing systems and more time doing the work that actually moves their organizations forward. Learn more at paylocity.com Keywords: work navigation, employee burnout, micromanager, micromanaging boss, can't quit your job, staying in a job, HR support for struggling employees, workplace experiments, invisible labor, emotional labor, working fewer hours, relationship with work, employee agency, public service loan forgiveness, mental health recovery, coaching skills for HR, golden child, HR Mixtape, Lynnae Brown, Dr. Shari Simpson