My boss called me in recently and told me that he's planning to give a significant portion of my responsibilities to one of my peers, who's threatened to leave if he didn't have his role enlarged. My boss asked me to go along to get along—what should I do?

Since it's your boss asking, it's a very difficult request to refuse unless you have an ally at a much higher level who can intervene (more on this later), but you don't want to go along quietly. Think about reasonable things that you might be able to extract in exchange for your cooperation, such as a promotion or a move into a high-profile area at your company (given the current environment, though, think carefully about what would constitute a "reasonable" request at your company now). If you can't think of something specific now, you could also say to your boss, "Well, I'd be glad to do it, but you owe me one," using care to communicate this in a direct but non-threatening way. Now is the right time to think and to say, What's in it for me?

One of my current clients, an executive at a media company, has been asked to give a portion of his staff to a colleague and also to accede to having a greater percentage of the company's overall budget allocated to this colleague. My client has put several options on the table in exchange for going along with this plan—a promotion to a new level, transferring a highly capable person whom he covets into his group, and a higher salary. Things haven't shaken out yet, but it looks like my client will get the manager that he wants moved into his group, and will also be able to expand into some new, more innovative areas at the company. The promotion and salary requested are unlikely to be granted because of the financial conditions at his company, but at least it wasn't a complete loss for him.

A riskier play if you really feel that going along with your boss's plan would be a terrible move for you and you possess the proper connections would be to go over your boss's head. But as I outlined previously in a column about what to do about an underperforming boss, the trick is to go to this senior person in the spirit of asking for advice and feedback and not one where you're complaining about your boss. You're simply informing that person about a situation that's come up and asking for their advice on what to do, and what's left unsaid is what they might be able to do about it. Even if they can't or won't intervene on your behalf, you can still probably get some useful information from this senior person about what you might ask for from your boss in exchange for your acquiescence.

The important thing is to have a clear idea of what you want to get out of this transaction for yourself.

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Dr. Ron Brown is a leading expert in the fields of leadership development and organizational change. He is the founder and president of Banks Brown, a management-consulting firm that specializes in providing skills to optimize the performance of leaders and organizations. He can be reached at rbrown@banksbrown.com or 415-788-5444. Questions for Power Plays can be submitted on this page.