Conflicting priorities: what should your manager resolve?
In financial services, insurance, tech and the European headquarters of international groups in Zurich, an employee may receive requests from several managers. The useful question is specific: when should you ask your manager to clarify a priority, and when should you ask them to choose between competing demands?
What the literature establishes
Travis C. Tubre and Judith M. Collins (2000, Journal of Management) identify a negative association between role ambiguity and job performance in a meta-analysis. Role ambiguity refers here to a lack of clarity about expectations, responsibilities or the conditions for carrying out the work. Their synthesis does not, however, establish that every clarification provided by a manager will automatically improve performance.
Clarifying a request does not resolve an incompatibility
Susan E. Jackson and Randall S. Schuler (1985, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) examine role ambiguity and role conflict separately, along with their relationships with various organisational and individual variables. A request can be perfectly clear yet incompatible with another: delivering earlier while following a validation procedure that cannot be shortened, for example. This distinction suggests separating two conversations with your manager: obtaining missing information and securing a decision on a trade-off.
The premature conclusion
One might infer that an effective relationship requires a manager who sets every priority and removes all uncertainty. That would confuse clarification with centralisation: the cited research does not establish that exhaustive instructions are desirable. A reasonable practice is instead to specify what employees can decide independently and what requires a managerial decision, without presenting this recommendation as a demonstrated causal effect. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence and everyday habits leave unresolved
These syntheses rely largely on correlational studies and on measures that vary in their implementation; they do not test a specific protocol for discussions with a manager. Nor do they focus specifically on organisations in Zurich. In practice, a verbal agreement about “the priority” still leaves a question unanswered: which other request is being postponed, and who needs to be informed?
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR’s “Construire une relation efficace avec son manager” programme, an exercise suitable for a Zurich team is to record every instance of incompatible demands referred to the manager over two weeks. For each case, note whether the conversation produces a written record specifying the chosen priority, the request postponed or renegotiated, and the people to inform. The measure is the proportion of all referred cases that document these three elements: it checks the traceability of decisions, not a demonstrated improvement in performance. To go further: explore the Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager training in Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager in Zurich
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