Managing Your Boss

Many of us hope and expect that our boss will turn out to be a great coach and mentor, someone who guides us with the wisdom of experience, supports us with training and constructive feedback, gives us challenging and meaningful assignments, promotes our successes to upper management, and always has our career path and best interests in mind. Some of us are lucky enough to find that kind of boss – maybe once, in our entire career.

But for the most part, we find bosses who are almost as lost in the organization as we are, trying to prove themselves, find meaning in their work, and plot their own career path as best they can. Some managers came by the title due to technical experience alone and have little talent or interest in the “people management” part of their duties. Others want to be managers, but are so wrapped up in the role that their attempts to guide and support the team seem self-serving.

Either way, as an employee, you are powerless until you have worked out a way to effectively manage your boss.

Wait a minute, you ask. Isn’t that presumptuous? Since when do I manage my boss? Isn’t it his job to manage me? Yes. Technically it is. But chances are 9 to 1 that your boss does not know all your hopes, dreams, talents, skills and interests. That he or she doesn’t have a clear idea of where you want to be in five or ten years or a major investment in getting you there. If your boss does, appreciate the relationship as the diamond it is, and you can stop reading this article right now.

But the rest of us have a clear choice to make. One is to sit back and let our boss manage the relationship with us. We may learn something, we may get lucky, but we wont have control over our destiny, and there is no guarantee that we will move forward in our career. And the second is to create a strategy to work effectively with our boss. This is possible, no matter who or how difficult your boss is. You can get started by taking the following steps.

1. See your boss as a person, not your parent or teacher.

Your current relationship with your boss probably has a lot to do with how well you’ve worked with authority figures in your past. If something your boss does angers you, ask yourself what you were expecting – and what kind of people in your life you would expect this from.

2. Let go of your boss’s faults

Every human needs to grow and improve in several areas. Your boss has a right to his faults, just as you do. Recognize this, and choose NOT to emulate the characteristics that aren’t effective in the workplace. In fact, as you develop a stronger relationship with your boss, you may be able to help him become more effective.

3. Know what you can learn from your boss.

No matter how incompetent or inexperienced your boss appears to you, she most likely has at least one thing on you. She probably has more experience or technical expertise in at least one area related to your job. She also may be more effective at handling difficult situations at work. Look for what she does well – this represents an excellent opportunity for you to improve your own skills.

4. Step into your boss’s shoes

Remember that your boss also has a boss. Lower level supervisors and managers often feel less power than their own employees because they feel pressure from above and below. Directors and Vice Presidents often find themselves caught in a very competitive political game, whether they want to be there or not. Even the owner of the company has competitors to fight with, customers to fight for, and lots of uncertainty to deal with. If you know what your boss is trying to figure out or accomplish, you will have a better understanding of his priorities and how you and your work fit in.

5. Learn your boss’s preferred communication style

How does your boss prefer to communicate? Does she respond better to ideas presented in written proposals, formal presentations, or casual suggestions in meetings or hallway conversations? Does she give direct feedback openly or prefer private “behind closed doors” meetings? Does she like voice mail or e-mail better? If you adapt to her way of communicating, you have a better chance of getting attention when you need it.

6. Know how your boss tracks results

Formal progress reports are great – but don’t be fooled by them. Some bosses don’t read them until review time, and depend on casual conversations to know what’s going on. Regardless of how your boss takes in information, it’s essential for him to quickly retrieve information he needs about you. This is key to your success, both at review time, and when he happens to be having a conversation with his own boss about a project you are involved with. Make sure you are tracking your own progress and taking responsibility to keep him informed in his way, so he’ll have your list of successes at his fingertips when he needs it. This is different from “tooting your horn”. If you brag or boast arrogantly, you will annoy your boss as well as your co-workers. Responsible progress reporting is succinct, easy to remember, and tangibly tied to the objectives of the team or project.

7. Know your own needs

What do you need from your boss? What kind of direction or feedback do you need on your work? How often do you prefer to communicate? Know what your boss can do to best support your success. Communicate this to your boss in professional and tangible terms. And make it easy for her to comply. For example, “I work best when given a written checklist of objectives for a project, because I then use my checklist to keep me focused”. If your boss prefers to describe the project to you verbally, ask permission to take notes, and show her your “list of objectives” to get agreement and start you on the right foot.

8. Find a good coach or mentor

We all need support and guidance in our career. What we forget sometimes is that our boss is not our only resource. Take responsibility for creating at least three support systems in your life, and in a time of transition, increase that number to five. Besides family and a small circle of positive, supportive friends, find some people with the expertise you need to be successful. Find one or more mentors through a formal mentorship program or by networking. Create your own personal “advisory board” or success group with others in your field. Hire a coach. Enroll in trainings and workshops. Join professional associations. Keep in mind that each professional connection you have outside of your current work system will enlarge your perspective, and your network. And THAT makes your relationship with your boss a less significant factor in your career success. You would be amazed at how much easier it is to get along with your boss when so much less is at stake.

Take these steps and separate yourself from the personality and competence level of your boss. Then you can look at the bigger picture and create a strategy to get where you want to be in your career – on track and on purpose.

The ONE key skill that drives Professional Success

One of my favorite books is Crucial Converations. I read it a couple of years ago, and there are two key things I keep going back to. Number one, the authors did several years of research looking for what sets apart the most effective people in organizations. They were actually surprised at what they discovered. For those of you who haven’t read the book, they ended up with a pretty diverse group of relatively normal people. They were only able to isolate ONE key factor that they all had in common. It was the ability to effectively facilitate open, productive dialogue in high stakes, high emotion, critical conversations, where most people aren’t comfortable coming clean with what is really on their mind. A great example is confronting a high level boss on what appears to be hypocrisy: advocating cost cutting measures while spending lots of money on personal perks. Another example is having the courage to admit you don’t buy into a corporate initiative that everyone else is going along with, or confronting a peer on unethical behavior. The people who can do this, and do it honestly, authentically, respectfully, and consistently, inspire everyone around them, and they win loyalty and followers, whether or not they are a leader on paper. They are the leaders who emerge naturally, because everyone wants to work with them.

The second thing this book does is put together a model that shows exactly what an effective conversation is. So if you want to work on this NUMBER ONE skill and develop it, you have an idea of what you are shooting for. It’s plain as day: you don’t react to or snap back at people who push your buttons, you openly say what is on your mind without judgment, you pay attention to the assumptions you are making about people and situations, and instead of living in your stories, you take the initiative to talk to people, find out what’s going on, and test your assumptions. Easy to see, plain as day. But really, really, really, really hard to DO!

Have you ever tried to honestly confront your boss and not feel like you are risking career suicide? How motivated have you been to open up to your most political peers? And, after you’ve been burned in a meeting in front of the very people you are most trying to impress, do you really have the energy to approach the offender and graciously ask if they intended to impact you that way?

So, you know what skills you want to develop, and you know what it looks like when someone has that skill fairly well developed, but making the required changes in yourself to actually master the skill-set can be daunting.

This is where I come in. The series of tools I use in my coaching practice are all geared towards moving you to a place where you can interact powerfully and authentically with others. Here are just a few examples:

(1) You learn to get a firm handle on what drains you, and you manage your energy more effectively, so that when opportunities for crucial conversations come up, you have the mental clarity and confidence you need to handle them better.

(2) You learn what is behind your emotional reactions, and why you react more strongly to certain people and situations. This enables you to control your reactions better so that you are able to have more effective conversations.

(3) You learn basic principles of what drives behavior, which helps you understand what might be going on when others act immature, inconsiderate, or even completely out of line. This makes it easier to confront the behaviors without negative personal judgments.

(4) You become more self-aware, and learn to question and test your assumptions as a matter of course, which enables you to consider multiple perspectives at once, make better decisions, and better facilitate meetings and important discussions with others, whether you are the “designated” meeting manager or not.

I’ve compiled all of this into a new Interpersonal Mastery program that has one purpose: to help clients focus on and build the ONE SKILL that drives professional success. The program can be brought into an organization as a series of workshops or classes, or it can be taught within an individual or group coaching program, and I have found what often works best is a combination of training and coaching.

But the best thing with this program is you can take it one step at a time. Interpersonal mastery is SO important, and it makes SUCH a big difference in your effectiveness within the work environment, that in one short two-hour presentation, you can get enough information to apply immediately and start seeing a difference in your conversations.

One thing I wonder, is if interpersonal mastery sets apart the most effective individuals within organizations, what happens to organizations that commit to increasing this skill in ALL employees? I have been parts of small teams that have achieved amazing results, and in all those teams we had open, productive dialogue paired with a shared excitement about our goal. If you provide the goal – I can teach the skills that pave the way to productive dialogue. Just imagine what could be possible for your team!

If you’d like to test this program out, the easiest way to do it is bring an initial seminar into your organization. You can treat your team to an offsite or, if time is short, you can start by setting aside an hour in your regularly scheduled staff meeting. Even the smallest step can make a difference.

I am willing to schedule up to four events each month for organizations located in or close to Orange County, California. If you would like to bring a workshop or presentation into your organization, please call (949) 495-1021, and we can get you on the schedule!