As a manager, how can I handle an employee who says "I disagree with you, but let us discuss with XYZ" where XYZ is my manager?

You should probably talk to your manager and

• address this in an objective manner (without going into accusations etc.) as the employee is using your manager as a vehicle to question your authority. If you two come to an agreement on how to handle this, it is much harder for the employee to use your manager as a lever.
• find out whether there is some closer connection between the employee and your manager that would possibly make your manager taking sides with your employee.

If you find that it's more like the last point, consider what your options are: Do you want to fight it through, possibly against your manager? Or do you give in? If you want to fight, who are your allies?

Normally I’d say if there are two ways to do a thing, then the person who has to do it should be the one to decide, unless you can see that this method is bad for some reason. The reason: It is better motivation for that employee, and everyone wants to show they are right, so you create a situation where “employee shows he is right” and “employee benefits the company” coincide.

But whether your manager should be involved is something that you and only you should decide. Which means that either his approach is better and is used, or your approach is better and that is used, and it is solely your decision. Your manager most likely doesn’t want to hear anything about this.

Additionally to the very good answer from @HansMartinMosner, some other input.

• You have the right to just say something like "I decide that we will do ". It might backfire, if he answers with passive-aggressive behavior. Or if he is related or friend with your manager.

• Or you may just have a face-to-face with your manager and ask him to help you find a way to handle this kind of situation. If your manager takes his side non-objectively (regardless of the actual words), you might better go find another job at another place.

However, even if they are related, your manager might actually be reasonable, so do not give up before the start of the fight.

The reverse of the coin is that your employee actually has better ideas / solutions. I do not know you whatsoever, but the Internet is full of stories with managers who are technically-obsolete.

To verify if this is the case, discuss either with him or with other people in the team WHY that idea seems better to them, instead of yours. Use the technique creating those columns, seeing the two ideas side by side: what is good for each, what is bad for each, how is the other similar or different.

"Prefers" is not compelling in a business environment. As a manager, it is your responsibility to set goals and priorities, precisely for this reason: so that decisions about how to proceed can be made objectively.

Every decision will have trade-offs. "Do nothing until a higher manager approves the choice" is also a decision, and also has trade-offs; unlike the decision to do something, doing nothing has few upsides, and many downsides. If nothing else, the fact that the project is stalled until a senior leader can find time to be brought up to speed on the context of the decision is a big problem because it puts deadlines at risk.

If neither of you has an objective reason for doing it your way, that alone may be more compelling than "because I said so." At the very least you can say "we will do it my way until the senior leader can review the decision, and we will undo it if it was the wrong call or run into problems" (this is called two way door decision-making and it's a good practice in general).

If there are other factors that play into the decision, it is important to explain that to the employee. For example, risk of error, or cost/speed trade-offs - or simply that a downstream team has strict requirements for the inputs they can take.

At the end of the day, it is the employee's responsibility to produce the outputs required of them. If the employee's chosen method produces those outputs within the parameters of error rates, speed, cost, etc, then you should consider picking your battles. On the other hand, if the employee's approach is measurably falling short then that is the information you should take to your own manager - on your own, to set context for what you plan to do about it.

Firstly, how does your manager respond when your employee calls and asks for a resolution to a problem that you think should have stayed between you and your employee?

If your manager responds positively to these events, it may be because he

• Has a high opinion of your employee, and values his input
• Has a low opinion of you, and appreciates when your mistakes are caught by your employee
• Does not see the impact that these interactions have on your team dynamics

Talk to your manager and see which one(s) applies. Then deal with that.

If your manager responds negatively to these interactions, team up and tell your employee to stop doing this.

Can you potentially carve out responsibilities that don't involve stepping on each other's toes like this?

If a job involves a great deal of judgment and complexity - and I'm not clear what the job is here - then you don't typically want two people constantly arguing about it, especially not in a frequent and reactive way unless you either have a master-apprentice relationship or you are handling an assistant who is grossly incompetent.

It might well be a sign of your incompetence as a manager if you have continued to intervene in ways that, especially, your own manager on multiple occasions doesn't ultimately think is justified and compelling.

What would the consequences actually be if you let your staffer just get on with it?

To start, I fully concur with Hans-Martin Mosner's topline: discuss this with your manager. This is a triangular relationship and you cannot avoid having your manager involved, especially given they are at the same location, but you are not.

I get a sense from your question that this situation is making you feel somewhat insecure. This is perfectly natural and normal based on the situation you describe. In my experience, this is a situation where a lot of managers make a mess of things. The emotional, ego-driven response to this situation is to assert your authority either with your subordinate, your manager or both and demand that you make such decisions unilaterally.

This can be different across organizations and cultures but in a well-run company, such a response is often perceived as a display of weakness. It shows an inability to lead without coercive tactics towards your subordinates. You should step back and consider seriously whether you are more worried about your personal feeling than being an effective manager.

Remember that your job as a manager is not about asserting dominance over others. Your role is about helping your subordinates be the best employees they can be. Obviously, there are limits. You can't let people be openly insubordinate. But one of the mistakes I've seen managers make again and again is to overplay their authority card, leading to poor outcomes and sometimes the manager's dismissal.

We can't know all the details of your situation but if were in the situation (as I understand it,) I would talk to my manager and make sure I was framing the discussion around trying to make sure the best outcome is achieved for my employer. Assuming my manager was OK with being involved, I would not only agree to the discussion, but I would take ownership of that discussion. That is, I wouldn't passively and reluctantly agree but I would rather drive the discussion and make sure it happened on my terms. Again, with the clear goal of achieving the best result, not for me or my ego, but for the organization.

That said, I had a subordinate who attempted to usurp my authority and bad-mouthed me to my management. The result was that my subordinate left the organization, and I remained. I think part of the reason was that by my avoiding heavy-handed tactics, their attacks on me fell flat and reflected poorly on them.

TL;DR: Take the high road. Try (to at least appear) to be above petty conflicts with your subordinates.

I see your dilemma. I got this a lot as a teacher, when students and families wanted to jump upstairs over the smallest disagreements. You don’t want to look bad for appearing to not resolve it, you don’t want to get overridden by a subordinate, and you don’t want to trouble XYZ or appear mistaken. I’d act as follows:

1. To your subordinate, say: “XYZ is very busy and we all agree things ought to be resolved at the lowest level possible. But I can see you disagree with me. Here’s my recommendation. Try things my way for 2 weeks. And if after that, if you have genuinely taken my advice and don’t feel good about the effectiveness of my recommendations, let me know and I’ll be the first to back your request for XYZ to set aside the time to guide us in this.”

2. Drop the shortest email you can to XYZ to summarize the exchange.

Now, what can come of it? Here are the possibilities: A. Your subordinate can jump over you immediately and look precious. B. Your subordinate will learn you were right and nothing will come of it but growth, and you’ll appear to have handled it. C. XYZ will have to opportunity to share with you he/she agrees with your subordinate and give you the opportunity to own a shift in thinking. Or D. You can revisit with XYZ after said time elapses and ask whether he/she thinks you all have a legitimate reason to take the time to meet.

That way, nobody suffers any surprises, you’ve demonstrated reasonable leadership and maturity, all control comes from above, and best practice will emerge.

(I learned all this the hard way, and there’s a reason they offered me early retirement.)

You are right being uncomfortable - While in some areas this type of interactions could be acceptable (i.e. a developer who's highly experienced in the field, can be an unofficial boss and project manager simply let him do as he pleased.) the way he talks is unacceptable, and makes it perfectly clear he is doing a power move.

"I decide that we will do" made me (respectably) smile, because "Anyone who has to say I am the king is not true king."

I am guessing that normally you work and talk comfortable and unofficial approach, but since he is in the same city, uses it to overwrite your authority. Therefore, your manager must support you - either you might bring this to your manager and share that you feel like the way he uses the informal approach process makes you uncomfortable and you want to turn to formal approach. Or you simply guide XYZ to follow the formal approach procedure, by saying "Lets arrange a meeting to listen to him" and rejecting informal meetings, you can then approach XYZ to share the reason of your behavior.

So either your manager should reply to him as "It's been decided, but we can be happy to discuss with you.", or you can deny any informal meeting he might want to drag you, and say "Me and my manager can schedule a meeting to listen to you."

The meeting must be a 2v1 meeting, with you and your manager on one side, and he is on the other. He should brings his case to both of you. And you can ask your questions to him, have your debate if necessary, then thank to him and you will consider his input.

One bad scenario is that your manager just listens to him and asks you to do what he bring up, you might feel uncomfortable, you can argue your case etc. But actually your authority remains the same - it's your manager's lack of authority, and since you work for him, you don't have to care about it.

And as a manager, your technical responsibilities are already there: Assign the task and deadline to him, ask his progress, if he replies "I will talk to XYZ" do not reply, and if the deadline passes discuss with your manager if you have to start a disciplinary process. You don't have to interact with him.

Regarding talking to your manager, as another answer suggested: I'd say that's premature. If someone that reports to me came with me at this point, I'd think there's still plenty they could've done, and thus they don't really know how to manage people. That is fine - it's a learning opportunity. But as a recommendation, I'd suggest trying to handle it yourself, first.

Of course, it depends how important the issue is, how experienced each of you are, and how often each of you are right. If they're a junior, their suggestion to get your manager's opinion probably carries less weight than if they're an experienced subject matter expert (although the latter is also more likely to have an ego, which could make them have problems with authority). One may treat people similarly regardless of experience, but their experience is nonetheless a factor to consider, when they're making judgements about the work.

If they suggest going to your manager, you could respond with something like:

• That's not necessary, or
• We don't need to waste their time with [something minor like] this, or
• I'm sure we can resolve this ourselves.

You could add "I don't think" to the first two (and remove the "not") to make them less assertive. Although that opens the door wider, for them to disagree with you and insist on taking it to your manager.

Similarly, you could also say it's not necessary "yet" or "at this point". But this implies that if you can't come to an agreement, then it would be time to go to your manager, which you may not want to imply.

What you follow that up with would probably be identical to whatever you'd respond if they just said "I disagree".

• You could ask why they disagree.
• You could explain why you think what you think.
• You could say "let's just do it this way for now", possibly with some "I'll have them review this during a progress update".

The last approach is obviously more heavy-handed, which is generally not ideal. It's almost always better to try to help the employee see why your suggestion is better (if it's better), but that may not always be possible. You'll need to figure out what's appropriate in your case.

If they go to your manager behind your back, or they continue to insist that you two go to your manager, even when you're being assertive, then I'd say discussing it with your manager could make more sense. You could also clarify to the employee (possibly in a separate discussion) that you are their manager, in case that may be unclear to them, although that may be a more difficult conversation.

I also second the suggestion to generally lean towards letting them do things their way, if there aren't clear advantages one way or the other.

This also can also be used to help along your suggestions in future, e.g.:

We followed your suggestion for ..., let's go with my approach this time.

You could also make the last part a bit more managerial, by pointing out your approach e.g. aligns better with business needs or by citing your own experience to back up your suggestion.

The simple answer is "no, let's not. If you can't follow instructions, then the only third party we're going to get involved is HR."

The kind of behavior you're getting from this employee is completely unacceptable. The employee isn't there to agree with your authority, but to accept your authority as a manager. Notwithstanding you giving any instructions that are against the law or lean toward unethical, your employee is way out of line. There can be discussion from the employee on approaches to getting work done, but ultimately your seat of authority chooses.

Maybe the thing to do is to keep your boss out of it for now and learn of what resources HR has, including putting the employee on a PIP.