A friend calls me from time to time about her workplace issues. Today, she was trying to think about how to deal with a meeting her boss had called to strategize how to deal with another, later meeting. (You know how it goes.) She complained she has done a lot of work and has sent emails saying clearly what needs to be done on other people’s part, and yet the two other people who will be in the meeting have instead done something different.

She is a very competent person, and she knows her job inside out, but she doesn’t know how to manage people.

Being a secretary for a long time taught me a lot of management skills. I learned early on that I had to manage my boss. Once I nailed that, my job got a whole lot more streamlined and I had a lot of free time. The only downside was that I had to look busy all the time, not just when I was efficiently taking care of my boss’s needs, which is how I ended up writing my first published novel. Typing is typing.

In my Ph.D. program, which was partly about management, I found out in classes and in my fieldwork that hey, guess what, making it easier for people to do what you want is very effective. The administrative hierarchy, the operations manual, and the published curriculum aren’t that important.

Later, I managed a department of high school teachers who looked down on me (I was a middle school teacher). I did it by being deliberately simple-minded about what I wanted them to do. I picked my battles. I let them talk, I told them what the outcome of the meeting was, and I let them believe I was just summarizing what they had all said.

The same for fencing. I made it far too comfortable for my opponents to do what I wanted. Also, I knew every fight was not worth winning, just the important ones, and you get to decide which ones are important. Some people hated that I thought that way. They thought I should be competing to the best of my ability all the time, but that way leads to injury and burnout. I have four over-50 World Championships gold medals as a result.

Recently, a group I belong to was considering opening a bank account to handle their small amounts of money. I deliberately skipped the business meeting because I knew the topic was contentious, but they tabled the motion for the next month so I could weigh in, the bastards.

I had to decide what my goal was. I couldn’t just keep skipping the business meetings, because things happen there that I am interested in. On the whole, I decided, I didn’t want the checking account. We didn’t have enough money to make it worthwhile, and it would just make the treasurer’s job worse.

When they asked me to say something in the next meeting, therefore, I said, “I looked it up. Some groups do have checking accounts. Here’s the requirements,” and I read them the official guidance from the central office, which included stuff about signatures, tax ID numbers, nonprofit status, and so on.

I left it at that. It looked as if I was being extra helpful.

They didn’t get the bank account.

So I told my friend who called me this morning that she couldn’t just tell everyone off or complain. No, she had to decide what her real goal was for the meeting, be the adult in the room, pick her battles, make it easy for them to do what she wanted, and then tell everyone what just happened.

She told me she felt much better and went off to her meeting.

I am so glad I mostly don’t have to do that kind of thing as much, now that I’m retired. The only person I really have to manage is my cat Uncle Louie, and currently our only conflict is over my new recliner. Once I realized that the important thing is not whether he sits in my recliner, but that I have to be willing to kick him out when I want to sit down, things became much clearer.

The problem is that Louie is a very effective manager. He is so cute that it makes it way too easy for me to just let him have the damn thing.